I am big fan of older Thinkpads and their maintainability and upgradeability. Whenever I am talking to coworkers and friends about these possibilities all of them are at least intrigued. The same want for something like that pops up here regularly in threads e.g. about failing Macbook keyboards.
My idea is to source a small amount of laptops (e.g. Thinkpad X-Series or T-Series) from eBay et al., service and upgrade them and sell them to people looking for productivity. Warranty and service included. Additionally I would like to curate parts and service information for these models.
Thoughts on this little side project idea?
I am going to be upgrading my rather battered 1st gen carbon X1 soon but ill be looking for one with 16gb of ram in it and theres not much to be upgraded on them really save for the SSD (i know id probably get more out of a T series but i like the portability and battery life of the carbon)
I would suggest that you just make laptops yourself as semi-customs rather than calling them Thinkpads. Just advertise the specs and the price and market yourself well. You'll get a lot of lowballers but thats just life these days :)
a. Size of the market
b. I imagine the target market for these would be fairly technical people who might be under the impression (rightly or wrongly) that they could replicate your work easily.