Hardware
ThinkPads, Unix-installed
Refurbished ThinkPads that arrive with GNU/Linux or BSD already working, including every function key, the fingerprint reader and the dock, provisioned from the same repository as your servers.
Everything else we sell runs on European infrastructure and free software, but people then use it from a laptop that phones home to another continent. This service covers the laptop as well.
Why ThinkPads
Unix works properly on them, and they can be repaired. Lenovo publishes hardware maintenance manuals, parts are available years after release, and a keyboard or battery is a fifteen-minute job with one screwdriver. For a fleet that is expected to last, repairability is what the cost model rests on.
They are also abundant on the refurbished market, which means a three-year-old machine at a third of the price, with the carbon cost already paid. Most of our clients are better served by a refurbished T14 or X1 than by anything new.
What “installed properly” means
We do not just hand over an ISO. Every function key, suspend and resume, external displays through the dock, the camera, the microphone, the fingerprint reader and the battery-charge thresholds are tested and documented, and known to work before the machine is posted.
The configuration is declared in Nix, so the fleet is described in your repository like your servers. A lost or broken laptop is replaced by provisioning a new one from the same expression, instead of spending a week working from someone’s memory.
GNU/Linux or BSD
Most fleets get NixOS or Debian. Where a machine is doing network or security work and the operator wants the smaller, more conservative system, OpenBSD or FreeBSD is a real option, and we will set it up rather than talk you out of it.
Either way, full-disk encryption is standard, the recovery procedure is written down, and nothing on the machine reports to anybody.
Where it falls short
Hardware support on a refurbished fleet is a real obligation and we price it as one. Some peripherals and software, such as a specific videoconferencing dock, a vendor-locked printer or a piece of Windows-only engineering software, will not cooperate, and we will identify those before you buy rather than after. If your staff need Adobe or Microsoft Office natively, this is not the service for them; we will say so in the first meeting.