Buy a used one, ideally refurbished. Those can be incredibly cheap. Feel free to slap any basic out of the box os on there, free os’s like Mint or Zorin are very beginner friendly, and you should be good to go.
I don’t know if other distros have that too, but Ubuntu and Mint (being Ubuntu-based) have a nice graphical driver manager. Really simplified things when I used Nvidia GPU and Realtek WiFi card. Just click to install, restart, there you go.
I recently bought my sister a used Thinkpad X280 for 90€ on ebay. Was in perfect condition, has multiple USBC ports with display support and is super compact and light at ~1.2kg
The biggest issue to avoid is ones where the previous owner put too much pressure on the top while folded, which can leave the display with dents from the keyboard being pressed into it.
Buy a used one, ideally refurbished. Those can be incredibly cheap. Feel free to slap any basic out of the box os on there, free os’s like Mint or Zorin are very beginner friendly, and you should be good to go.
I don’t know if other distros have that too, but Ubuntu and Mint (being Ubuntu-based) have a nice graphical driver manager. Really simplified things when I used Nvidia GPU and Realtek WiFi card. Just click to install, restart, there you go.
I recently bought my sister a used Thinkpad X280 for 90€ on ebay. Was in perfect condition, has multiple USBC ports with display support and is super compact and light at ~1.2kg
The biggest issue to avoid is ones where the previous owner put too much pressure on the top while folded, which can leave the display with dents from the keyboard being pressed into it.