My tl;dr advice for buying a computer on a budget is, get a T480s off of eBay. They are corporate cast-offs and there are so. many. of them. The R2v3 rating system has become popular. Get one rated C5 or better (cosmetic: minor usage marks only) and F4 or better (functionality: everything works). Spring for one with a backlit keyboard, and a power supply included if you want it turn key.
As of this writing this should cost around $250 and the machine should be fairly future-proof including official Win11 support. And excellent Linux compatibility - my fingerprint reader doesn't work, but literally everything else works perfectly.
Is there any tl;dr equivalent for upgrading screens like you described?
I'm a massive thinkpad fan, as per sibling comments I have half a dozen in the room with me right now, but have never and don't plan to ever replace a screen. My time and hassle are worth more than $0-$30 I'd pay for one that already comes with higher res, and the risk / pain / fidgetiness is outside of my own personal threshold. Not so for others!! But my message is you don't need to replace screens and 3d-pring and dremel new keyboards to get value out of ThinkPads :).
1. Awareness that not everybody can or wants or dares to do that or be you. There's other people in this world! :)
2. LoL-ing other people for not being you
Entirely you choice! :)
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e.g. I can change tires and oil on my car and am aware that majority of people can't or don't want to - even handy, technically oriented ones.
There's simply a vast, vast majority of people to whom:
1. I'd happily recommend a ThinkPad because I think it'll serve a wide swath of people well
2. I would not come anywhere near suggesting they replace their screen; not only would that likely lead to disaster, but it'd 99% turn them off from considering ThinkPad in the first place.
The reason I'm asking is - "T480" is the last nicely modular ThinkPad with removable external battery. Which means if you get a used one and need to replace the battery, it's literally a 2 second job - you push a button, slide it out, and slide the new one in :)
The "T480s" though is a slightly smaller version with only an internal battery, like all newer ThinkPads, which not everybody will be comfortable with.
And yeah, I have 2 T420s-s and 3 T480's around me today and love them :-)
The internal battery can be readily sourced and replaced easily enough.
My latest toy is a GPD Win Max 2, keyboard isn't too bad actually, but I doubt it will last anywhere near as long as the T480s.
And looking at my own work provided ThinkPad, I keep it closed and docked 99% of the time, so the keyboard looks brand new despite being a 4-year-old laptop now.
But that just depends on the user/site it goes to.
Maybe it will work. But mine has more than 50% degradation on both, and I run Nixos from RAM and don't do serious work on it, so I don't care about the shutdowns.