Learn me cheap lightweight laptop.

I've got a decent smart phone

I've got a decent laptop (15" Dell)

I'm looking for something cheap to fill in the gap that I can use on a long transatlantic flight with wifi.    Doesn't need to do anything special, websurf, email are basically all it needs to do.

not looking to spend hundreds of dollars.

I was thinking an 11.6" Chromebook with a 12hr battery but don't know which one or where to find one for real cheap.

check on slickdeals.net.    Can you wait until black friday days?

also,  I'm guessing your plane will have 115 outlets for you to use.    The last few flights I've been on did.

If using on planes then go no bigger than 11.6`

A chrome book under $200 probably fits your need. Think of it as a tablet with a real keyboard.  Lenovo is a good brand if you want some build durability. 

If you don't need a real keyboard then just go tablet.  Anything Samsung or Apple. 

I'm typing this on my Asus C302 Chromebook. I love it. It has a touchscreen, runs Android apps, the keyboard flips 180 degrees to make it like a real tablet. But it is about $400.

In reply to John Welsh :

Lenovo also does good tablets. I have a tab10 that is fantastic that I got off amazon for 130 bucks.

I always run cheap Chromebooks for travelling; oftentimes refurbs, but always under $150. They do everything you are looking for, with the addition of minor-scale Photoshop type work. They are perfect since most any laptop I use gets beaten up and destroyed in a couple years, no matter how expensive. 

I've been reasonably happy with Samsung (horrible hinges) and Acer (funky keyboard issues)  

But they all get dropped/stepped on/spilled on/run over eventually. 

John Welsh said:

If using on planes then go no bigger than 11.6`

A chrome book under $200 probably fits your need. Think of it as a tablet with a real keyboard.  Lenovo is a good brand if you want some build durability. 

If you don't need a real keyboard then just go tablet.  Anything Samsung or Apple. 

11.6" is exactly what size I was thinking.  Chromebooks being the most likely suspect since anything that small and cheap running windows 10 is a joke.  My dell had trouble running win10, I reinstalled win7 on it (it's an 8yr old i3 with 4 gb ram)

I do want a real keyboard, Iike the feel and can type faster on it than a screen,

Another vote for Chromebooks. I've been using them exclusively for 5yrs plus. 

Now they run android apps, and the beta OS release will run linux apps. 

I agree with all the above, a Chromebook is probably what you're looking for.  Given what you plan on doing with it, I doubt you'll really need a brand new one with the latest hardware.  Newegg has this one for $69 which seems cheap enough to at least try it for a while to see if it'll work and not be out a lot of money.

-Rob

rob_lewis said:

I agree with all the above, a Chromebook is probably what you're looking for.  Given what you plan on doing with it, I doubt you'll really need a brand new one with the latest hardware.  Newegg has this one for $69 which seems cheap enough to at least try it for a while to see if it'll work and not be out a lot of money.

 

-Rob

The specs look good to me.  4gb ram 16gb ssd dual core processor.  If it had touch screen I'd have already ordered it.  For now it's just bookmarked.  I'm planning on going looking tonight with my son to see if a Chromebook is right for me.

I ordered the $69 on e from newegg.  If I like the chrome os and feel I need the touchscreen, I'll upgrade after selling off this one.

ASUS has some great models now. very powerful and light. Too flimsy feeling for us to deploy to users so we went to Lenovo (Dell stopped offering real docking stations) but almost went with them

It came in on saturday and so far so good.
I do need a suitable email app for it that doesn't use gmail.  I tried aquamail, but it appears to have an issue with my spam folder.  I primarily need to check a couple of imap email addresses and gmail doesn't work well for me.  On my PC I use thunderbird and on my phone I use truetype.  Both of them allow me to easily see what's in my spam folder.

HELP!!!  On the plane I won't be able to run the phone and chromebook at the same time.

ended up just using the phone on the plane.  I do use the chromebook quite frequently since it gets to a usable place in 2 seconds versus 2 minutes on the laptop.

Definitely a worthwhile purchase, still looking for a good email app for it though.