At the end of the day, you are the only one who is genuinely interested/invested in ensuring that your ass is protected with a rental vehicle. Rental insurance is one of the things you should neveral generalize; always investigate and fully understand your specific car rental. Never trust that just because you're in province/state X that the rental vehicle must adhere to the local insurance requirements - rental companies often register vehicles outside a specific province/state (because its cheaper) and the liability limits may be very different. Vehicle rental companies generally offer add-on insurance - if you want to go this route then fully read the details and ensure that you are satisfied that you're adequately covered; this is particularly important when you're out-of-country.
Personally, when feasible, I always pay for my rental with a credit card that includes rental insurance that I have confirmed adequately covers me. As a backup, my personal vehicle's insurance also includes full rental coverage. In all cases, make sure to speak with the insurer ahead of time and discuss the limits of the insurance and what their procedure is if you get into an accident, particularly when you're out of your home province/state or country.
Always wipe and do a fresh install. If you're installing Linux, its unlikely that the refurbisher will have installed your flavour of Linux anyway. If you want to dual-boot with Windows, most business ThinkPads come with a Windows Pro licence - just download the ISO and install it fresh, then install Linux.
Availability - ThinkPads are very popular in corporate environments and are generally replaced every 2-3 years. Although mostly Intel CPUs, there is a wide variety CPU+GPU available from lightweight to high performance.
Tough + well built + last forever
Easy to upgrade/repair. They're very user-accessible and its simple to upgrade RAM or SSD/M.2 drives. Plus, because they are so popular in the corporate environment, replacement parts (from batteries to WiFi+Bluetooth chipsets to trckpads) are very available and cheap.
Well supported in most (if not all) linux distros. Graphics just work, trackpads just work, WiFi just works.
Cheap.
Sent from my ThinkPad T580 (with both an internal and removable battery, I get 10+ hours of battery life)
At the end of the day, you are the only one who is genuinely interested/invested in ensuring that your ass is protected with a rental vehicle. Rental insurance is one of the things you should neveral generalize; always investigate and fully understand your specific car rental. Never trust that just because you're in province/state X that the rental vehicle must adhere to the local insurance requirements - rental companies often register vehicles outside a specific province/state (because its cheaper) and the liability limits may be very different. Vehicle rental companies generally offer add-on insurance - if you want to go this route then fully read the details and ensure that you are satisfied that you're adequately covered; this is particularly important when you're out-of-country.
Personally, when feasible, I always pay for my rental with a credit card that includes rental insurance that I have confirmed adequately covers me. As a backup, my personal vehicle's insurance also includes full rental coverage. In all cases, make sure to speak with the insurer ahead of time and discuss the limits of the insurance and what their procedure is if you get into an accident, particularly when you're out of your home province/state or country.