I have a Lenovo laptop I purchased in late 2019 because Microsoft would no longer support Windows7 and I wanted NOTHING to do with Windows 10. I wiped Windows 10 and installed Linux Mint v19.2 which worked well. I'm having some hard drive issues with it and the warranty's still good so I'll get a gift certificate from Best Buy for the value of it.

After reading your article, I seriously considered a Chromebook. Because I'm vision impaired, I need at least a 17" screen. I'm also not keen on having EVERYTHING in the cloud. You can install Linux on a chromebook but it's a lot more complicated than I want to deal with.

I discovered it's possible to buy a laptop with Linux pre-installed so I don't need to pay for a version of Windows that I'll never use. I'm not sure how difficult it will be to find one that's got a 17" screen for less than $600. The searches I've done so far only show expensive ones ($900 and more). I only paid about $400 for the one I have and it came with Windows 10.