Not having read all here I’ll post for the first time anyway! 
Getting Qubes up & running has been perhaps the greatest experience since I first got started with Suse in 98, and then VMware around 2000.
For the first time ever I have a realistic chance of compartmentalising all my apps, users, needs and tracked identities.
My main goal is simply to get way more privacy than I have now, I should have no powerful adversaries that I know of.
So getting an old X230 paid cash here in Asia & then installing worked very well - and I’m into really learning how to use Qubes the right way.
I totally would have bought a Nitro X230 instead if Bitcoin had not given back a little, might still do so later just to be able to compare 
It is super important that services like this exist. Although I can figure out most in terms of both hardware and software myself this is not what I prefer using my time for.
What I totally will spend a lot of time doing is to get used to sorting all my activities into the right Qubes, as well as getting all my kinda important apps installed in my own templates and so on.
Hope to be active & also recruit new users!