Every time someone posts something about OpenBSD, there is someone who will post how hardware support is a problem.

Maybe, not everything is supported, but on ThinkPad, almost all (if not all) hardware is supported, yes (lots of developers use these machines). However, I've run OpenBSD on very cheap laptops also, with the only thing unsupported usually being the wifi. This is easily solvable by buying a cheap/supported USB dongle for $10 or less.

OTOH, I've tried the most common Linux distro on a ThinkPad last week, and I couldn't even install because of the installer crashing (no, before anyone asks, the integrity was checked and it was OK).