I found a thinkpad with a radeon GPU for only 200 which was nice.

Ones of the reasons I like Pop, they install a recovery partition with a copy of the install USB, finally they have a 'factory reset' that reinstalls the OS while keeping the users home folders.

I disagree, I think protesting during working hours is kind of the point, same as a union protest during working hours. It affects the corps bottom line, the only thing they care about.

If you want to support Linux devs and continued development, I would buy from System76, Tuxedo Computers, or even Framework.

If you're going to buy used then yeah the Thinkpad is fine.

I'm also wondering what, they could be bitching in either direction.

Sometimes it might not be days later but weeks or months that I finally remember. At least it feels that way, I'm a bad judge of the passage of time.