Hard Core Shopping: Best Laptop Buy For The Buck SSD ?

wa8yxm wrote:
A lot depends on what you want it for.
Record keeping, A good business model
On line (or offline gaming other than solitare) a good gaming model
Simply browsing the web and online business. Hard to beat a chromebook in terms of bang for buck.. I run two of 'em most of the day.. One doing "nuttin-much" (Publishers clearing house) and the other.. Well I'm typing on it now.

Not much storage (But the will hold a few hours of video HD video)
Not much productivity software
I need to use a Windows box to print (Either move the file or as a server)

But for the value it spends all day on the internet with battery left.

Yea, it doesn't need any fan to cool it cause it doesn't overheat. That saves a good bit of battery. I don't know how much, but I would think it's a significant battery draw.

A lot depends on what you want it for.
Record keeping, A good business model
On line (or offline gaming other than solitare) a good gaming model
Simply browsing the web and online business. Hard to beat a chromebook in terms of bang for buck.. I run two of 'em most of the day.. One doing "nuttin-much" (Publishers clearing house) and the other.. Well I'm typing on it now.

Not much storage (But the will hold a few hours of video HD video)
Not much productivity software
I need to use a Windows box to print (Either move the file or as a server)

But for the value it spends all day on the internet with battery left.

dieseltruckdriver wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:

dieseltruckdriver wrote:
If you mainly do internet, maybe light word processing and spreadsheets a Chromebook would be perfect.
My mom has the first one I ever bought, and it still works like new. It has to be 5 or 6 years old now. Both my wife and I use our Chromebooks much more than the Windows 7 or 10 machines.

Edited to add:
You can work with spreadsheets and word processing without internet, and you can get by with a $200 to $300 computer that will work faster than Windows 10.
Just wanted to add that before someone says they don't work without internet.

Chromebooks are not a real substitute for all things "PC".

You do realize that a Chromebook is nothing more than a highly crippled Android OS?

Has very limited processing power, very limited on board RAM, has very limited onboard drive space, pretty much all of your "APPS" sit out on the "Cloud" not on your Chromebook, your "data files" sit out on the "Cloud", your printing sits out on the "Cloud"..

Want to install some PC software you have, NOPE, not going to happen on a Chromebook..

Can your Chromebook PRINT directly to a printer without the Internet? NOPE, not going to happen there.. Have to use an Internet printing app..

Can you plug in anything USB? Nope, not even close, some do, most do not.. The ones that might have a USB port, well most likely will not support say optical drives, printers or anything other than a flash drive..

Heck an Android phone has pretty much everything you need except for a bigger screen. But Mex WAS asking about a PC, not a wannabe pretend PC, a PC where you can install your own software LOCALLY, store all of your FILES locally, operate at 100% even without Internet.

Sure, it may be possible to do SOME very limited stuff on a Chromebook, but to REALLY do most anything it REALLY NEEDS 100% Internet connection, something that Mex does not have the luxury of.

The only thing the Chromebook has going is the cheap, cheap price, it really does not compare to a real Laptop running a Windows version of some sort for compatibility with the world..

If you want limits and be cheap then Chromebook is definitely your cup o tea..

:R
I deleted most of what I originally replied because it was getting too long.

You are right about the printing, I forgot about that, and should have mentioned that. Many of your other points are incorrect.

Standard USB is available on every Chromebook I have seen. Every USB device I have tried works the same as on a Windows machine. This includes keyboards, mice, and optical drives, I have several 1 and 2TB external drives that work the same as Windows.

No they can't run Windows software, that shouldn't even need to be said. Expecting them to is honestly ridiculous.

I stand by my original post, if all you need is offline Word or Excel compatible work and online surfing, a Chromebook CAN NOT BE BEAT for the price compared to a RAM hog Windows machine. 4 GB of RAM is more than enough for most casual users. Plus there are no moving parts inside a Chromebook to go bad, so they handle vibration much better, in my experience.

One of the reasons Chromebooks are so speedy, is that their only pushing 4.5 million lines of code compared to Windows 50 million. They don't need the fastest processor or the most memory for a number of reasons. Their designed to do one thing extremely well and that's surf the net. Just as in everything else, you get what you pay for. A low end Chromebook is just as disappointing as a low end PC. Another Chromebook advantage is you don't have to buy or run antivirus. Google takes care of that. Plus no hourglass or blue screen of death. I use to use google cloud print, but that's being discontinued the end of the year, but there are replacements like ezeep.com( I haven't tried it). I think Microsoft, in trying to be all things to all people, has become a bloated scruff filled mess that can't get out of it's own way. I think that's partly the reason people look back fondly on Windows 7. I didn't know that PC's are specially made for Walmart? So the Walmartian's get their own class of junk? Not surprised really. Walmart also gets all their eggs from China. I won't be eating those either.

Windows 7 ????
No more security updates for that dinosaur.

Did you know that Ebay probes computers when visiting that site?
If Ebay does it, so do others. Still want Windows 7 ?

See: Ebay probes computers

Gdetrailer wrote:

dieseltruckdriver wrote:
If you mainly do internet, maybe light word processing and spreadsheets a Chromebook would be perfect.
My mom has the first one I ever bought, and it still works like new. It has to be 5 or 6 years old now. Both my wife and I use our Chromebooks much more than the Windows 7 or 10 machines.

Edited to add:
You can work with spreadsheets and word processing without internet, and you can get by with a $200 to $300 computer that will work faster than Windows 10.
Just wanted to add that before someone says they don't work without internet.

Chromebooks are not a real substitute for all things "PC".

You do realize that a Chromebook is nothing more than a highly crippled Android OS?

Has very limited processing power, very limited on board RAM, has very limited onboard drive space, pretty much all of your "APPS" sit out on the "Cloud" not on your Chromebook, your "data files" sit out on the "Cloud", your printing sits out on the "Cloud"..

Want to install some PC software you have, NOPE, not going to happen on a Chromebook..

Can your Chromebook PRINT directly to a printer without the Internet? NOPE, not going to happen there.. Have to use an Internet printing app..

Can you plug in anything USB? Nope, not even close, some do, most do not.. The ones that might have a USB port, well most likely will not support say optical drives, printers or anything other than a flash drive..

Heck an Android phone has pretty much everything you need except for a bigger screen. But Mex WAS asking about a PC, not a wannabe pretend PC, a PC where you can install your own software LOCALLY, store all of your FILES locally, operate at 100% even without Internet.

Sure, it may be possible to do SOME very limited stuff on a Chromebook, but to REALLY do most anything it REALLY NEEDS 100% Internet connection, something that Mex does not have the luxury of.

The only thing the Chromebook has going is the cheap, cheap price, it really does not compare to a real Laptop running a Windows version of some sort for compatibility with the world..

If you want limits and be cheap then Chromebook is definitely your cup o tea..

:R
I deleted most of what I originally replied because it was getting too long.

You are right about the printing, I forgot about that, and should have mentioned that. Many of your other points are incorrect.

Standard USB is available on every Chromebook I have seen. Every USB device I have tried works the same as on a Windows machine. This includes keyboards, mice, and optical drives, I have several 1 and 2TB external drives that work the same as Windows.

No they can't run Windows software, that shouldn't even need to be said. Expecting them to is honestly ridiculous.

I stand by my original post, if all you need is offline Word or Excel compatible work and online surfing, a Chromebook CAN NOT BE BEAT for the price compared to a RAM hog Windows machine. 4 GB of RAM is more than enough for most casual users. Plus there are no moving parts inside a Chromebook to go bad, so they handle vibration much better, in my experience.

Watch the website slickdeals.net and watch the comments on laptops posted there, I only buy Lenovo and dell business line PCs they last long and are usually easy to fix, thinkpad or XPS for dell they are the cheapest or consider getting a refurb.

free radical wrote:

T18skyguy wrote:
If you want rippin performance in a PC, this one with it's Ryzen cpu can dust a lot of much more expensive models, but it has a few drawbacks.

One thing wrong with that
Acer has dim display !

I wouldn't call my Acer a dim display. In the outdoors, I do have to turn the brightness up all the way.
Which is about the same with my Lenovo and my DW's Dell.

You shouldn't label ALL models from a manufacturer based on what? One experience?

T18skyguy wrote:
If you want rippin performance in a PC, this one with it's Ryzen cpu can dust a lot of much more expensive models, but it has a few drawbacks.

One thing wrong with that
Acer has dim display !

If you want rippin performance in a PC, this one with it's Ryzen cpu can dust a lot of much more expensive models, but it has a few drawbacks.

Before throwing your old laptop, give MX Linux a spin.
Don't let the word Linux scare you.
MX is super easy to install & use.
Download the ISO, burn it - or use a Windows program like YUMI to put
it on a USB.
Boot your machine with the DVD (or USB). Choose option 'Try MX ...'
If you can access the internet, then choose option 'Install ...', 'Erase
and Use the entire disk...'
If your old computer has at least 2G RAM (4G is better) after 1/2 hr you should have a decent new PC for browsing (after tweaking Firefox - plenty of 'How to' on the Internet).
I am by no means an expert in Linux, but I was capable to install stuffs - considered extremely hard in Linux, for newbies - like driver for my Nvidia graphic card with the (extra) MX-Package Installer, with ease.