So, my mom's old HP Chromebook died. It looks like the SSD died. There are approx 37,000 screws to take it apart and you have to take the motherboard apart to get to the SSD, which is mounted to the underside.
My dad is tired of hearing her complain about using my old Asus Eee PC which is stupid slow and has a tiny screen.
Requirements:
Windows 10
i5 or whatever the AMD equivalent is now
15"-16" screen
No touchscreen
No 2 in 1 foldable funkiness
SSD
$400-$500
HP or Dell preferred but not a deal breaker
So I keep finding laptops that fold, have touchscreens, have 5400rpm drives or cost $900.
My mom just surfs Facebook, checks her email and plays Flash games. She's not a power user by any means but would like decent performance. The Chromebook worked OK but the whole "cloud print" thing, small 16gb SSD, pokey video performance and ChromeOS turned her off of Chromebooks.
My dad went to Staples and they tried to push a Dell Inspiron 15 with a 1tb 5400rpm drive on him along with $400 of extra software (Office 360, overpriced antivirus, other BS software). I read complaints of that model Dell being sluggish due to the HDD.
Halp?
I have a hyper fold laptop that I never hyper fold.
It also has a touch screen that I never touch.
These were both just things that came with my recent Lenovo ThinkPad
The droid you are looking for is a refurbished Dell Latitude. Something like this guy: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6AB5C63349
Does it have to be new with a warranty? I’m very happy with my ex-lease Lenovo T440s that just seems to work so far...
I haven’t looked to closely at windows laptops lately, but I would think the disconnect would be i5+SSD at the $500 price point.
At the moment SSD drives are expensive. They can be 1/3 the price of the type of machine you are looking at. If there is a Microcenter near them I would go on line and see what they have for open box or refurb. It is usually about half retail.
If you're OK with a Dell, I'd check out the Dell Outlet. Most in that price range have a regular hard drive, but if you do some searching, you can find ones with an SSD for under $500. For example: Inspiron 15
Available systems should be updated every day so it's worth watching each day if you're not in a rush.
-Rob
Unless you dislike Newegg, their power search is the tool to use. After a quick search 15”, SSD, Win10, i5, only refurbished units showed up under $500. New starts at $600, stepping down to an i3 gets you to $500. I’m not sure what AMD would be comparable. For refurbished units, I’m a fan of Toshiba, I’m not sure about the quality of the other brands.
Is everyone here really down with win10.....I've heard stories?
Stefan
MegaDork
10/31/17 3:52 p.m.
759NRNG said:
Is everyone here really down with win10.....I've heard stories?
I'm not, I think Microsoft screwed the pooch with their ads embedded in the start menu, the data harvesting and the other security issues.
Personally, I'd fire up an Ubuntu DVD or USB stick and have her try that and if it works, replace the SSD, install Ubuntu and get on with life.
Really, she needs a basic web browser in a box, something a tablet is perfect for. They make them in larger sizes now.
759NRNG said:
Is everyone here really down with win10.....I've heard stories?
I'm OK with, once you disable most of the built-in user tracking. I still have a slight preference for Mac OS despite being a Windows developer for over two decades, plus all my PCs have some form of Linux on there as well, but it's not *that* bad.
