Sorry about the category selection the selector does not seem to work well on mobile. This one the only one I could choose by holding down the menu. I could not scroll past it. If a mod could move this to wherever appropriate that would be great. Thanks!
Anyways my budget is $300ish. I would like a larger screen and a good touchpad and keyboard. A processor that's good enough to handle some multitasking. If the laptop has ram dimms of ddr3 ram I can install 16gb from my old laptop. I also don't need to spend a lot of money on storage as I have an extra SSD or two lying around. If the laptop could have two sata slots one for SSD and one for a laptop hard drive that would be perfect.
I also really need it to have good Linux support. Used, refurbished, etc is fine.
Fair enough. It's not entirely mandatory. I suppose another requirement is for it to not too overly heavy. The reason I stated the fact that I had older parts to supply it with was as a possible money saving measure because I could buy a cheaper less specced laptop and upgrade those parts specifcally myself. Ie: good cpu, weight, etc but its the less ram and less hd space model.
Its a shame the way laptops are going in that sense, if you want the upgradability it's not going to be thin and light. Although I don't find a thinkpad t30 to be particularly "heavy"