Been using this for a while now and it works well for a shared shopping list alternative to keep. The android experience can be a bit laggy but that is probably more about my phone.

Using a VPS only gives you 1 extra location, and its the same one each time, so for some region-locking, or anonymization, it might not be as useful. But it does give you a bit of freedom to do extra things, write your own scripts, or automation, use as syncing or game server, and a VPS that only you use is unlikely to get labelled or identified as security or geo-lock circumventing method, or back door, as its just an infrequently visited IP address. A VPS is more work than a plug and play VPN but can be a good method of learning/testing how things work.

…compelling, colour me convinced.

Not American, nor did I bring up politics. Place of manufacture, and the company doing it is a factor when buying tech. But feel free to be offended. But maybe keep that off a technology discussion board.

A few months ago I bought a Gigabyte Aorus 15g (intel 10th gen), made in Taiwan, and are relatively more open with visitors/reporters than their mainland China counterparts. Very happy with it so far. Runs ubuntu/debian out of the box flawlessly. Nvidia prime-select allows to run games with high FPS with no compromises, or gpu codes in python/matlab, and use the intel gpu for other things to get all day use out of the massive battery. The keyboard has made me a convert to mech-keyboards. The laptop itself is well made, metal, rigid. They don’t sell direct in the EU but I eventually found one with the right components and keyboard layout. If you are in the EU (https://geizhals.eu/) or (https://tweakers.net/) are great for searching. Their higher spec’d versions aint cheap but you can shop around to find a deal. They also make similar spec’d Aero series but the high refresh rate screen (300hz) on the Aorus is more useful to me than the oled screen on the Aero, with may be a factor if you have a terminal open all day in the same place on the screen. Was also looking into Tuxedo (Germany), Entroware (UK), or System76 (US) but unfortunately as of 2 months ago they still are all Clevo (or TongFang or similar) laptops manufactured in mainland China, with a difficult traceability or outright bad working conditions, if that’s something you choose to factor in. System76 have some ‘made in the US’ promises but I havn’t seen any actual products yet. But the Tuxedo guys were very open about where they are sourcing things, as far as they could be, and seem to do a lot in the space, I was impressed. Purism have the librem series which seems good but I have no first hand experience with it.