Thinkpads are what you want to look for. You can get a refurbished one from eBay or Amazon Renewed for $300 and they almost all have upgradable storage and RAM, as well as having the rest of the parts being easier to replace than a consumer laptop.

The T14 series is the one to look at.

You can remove it. There is actually an “IoT Enterprise LTSC” edition that is fresh from the start, though it may not support the very latest hardware so install 11 Pro then use Revo uninstaller’s Windows apps tab to remove the junk.

I wouldn’t recommend it. Just install ExplorerPatcher to get the old UI back.

The amount of telemetry is essentially the same and most of it can be turned off in the settings.

Go to your Google account settings and make sure that web & app activity, location history and ad personalisation are turned off.

Then uninstall/disable the Google apps you won’t need then replace them with alternatives from F-droid (add the Izzyondroid repo too) like Cromite (in FFUpdater), Comaps, Thunderbird and QUIK SMS.

You should also follow standard practices like setting a non-easy to guess PIN code and also installing security updates.

Just don’t connect it to the internet. The radio and Bluetooth do not need an internet connection to work and you can use your phone for maps and music streaming.

Onn/Thompson sticks. They also use the stick form factor but they run Google TV so they shouldn’t be affected.

If you’re using this laptop to do work, then Mint or Zorin can’t be beat. They have user-friendly interfaces, they have stable packages meaning updates are unlikely to break your OS, and you can still install new software through Flatpak and Snap.

Once installed, install Librewolf for web browsing, VLC for video playback, OnlyOffice for MS Office files, and any other software you need from the built-in software store. If you choose Mint then you need to turn on unverified Flatpaks in the software store for everything to appear.

Also, with the original 1 x 4 GB of RAM and mechanical hard drive, this laptop will be slow with a modern OS, so I recommend upgrading it to 8 GB RAM (2 x 4 GB is recommended for dual channel speed) and an SSD beforehand.

Use a VPN with a circumvention protocol like Stunnel. Windscribe has a ‘stealth’ mode using it.