Another “hand me down” unit came from a neighbor. They had a nice HP ENVY x360 with Windows 10 on it, which of course expired. Not really knowing what to do, and realizing that I had pretty good experience with Lenovo units, they got themselves one of the lighter, slim Lenovo (inexpensive) commodity systems. I helped them activate it, and they gifted their older HP to me.
Surprisingly enough, though not high powered, I actually found the HP ENVY x360 to have very nice backlit keys that DO NOT have that gummy feel to them! Not a hot rod, not anything super special, but that HP Envy is a very solid laptop and it’s not the first time that I’ve had an HP ENVY, so for those who DON’T have $2,000-$3,000 to spend, an HP ENVY, particularly a used or refurbished one makes a good unit to through a light to middle weight Linux distribution. I put a November 2024 respin of antiX on it and it can be updated and it runs nicely.
So I’ve got quite a collection: Acer Chromebook Plus 516, Lenovo Thinkpad 14 Gen 3, HP-14 Ryzen 5, HP ENVY x360, Lenovo Thinkpad X201 and Dell Inspiron 5558; my wife has an HP Chromebook with an Intel Core i3; I guess that with 3 HP and 2 Lenovo, those are the models that dominate; when I owned computers a long time ago I had quite a few Dell models, another brand that I like.