Have a question about laptops

I, my church my son, and several county governments he works with have been very happy with Acer laptops. Prices are good, very little need for service but when it is needed they are the best. I'm on my 2nd one as the 1st was destroyed by lightning. Consult with anyone you know for internal specifications that will best serve your needs before buying any computer.

Dave

Larger is definitely better in this case. Both my Wife I have dumped the desktops and went with 17" Dell laptops. Plenty of speed, lots of RAM, big hard drives and a passport to backup to. Both use Windows 10 and Office 365 which is fine. We both used Microsoft products during our working careers so we just stuck with it.

Dave

X2 on asking what do I want to do with it. One of the biggest problems with the little computers is the keyboard. If you plan to do much typing, like replying to this forum, I'd opt for a standard size laptop which has pretty much a standard keyboard.
My wife and I have our own laptops but you may only need one depending on how much each will use the device. Laptops are nice because your work is always with you whether at home, on the RV on in a motel room. Screen size is also a factor. My 15 inch screen (diagonal) seems to work fine for me but larger is better as one gets older!

If you have simple needs and don't play games that demand heavy horsepower then stick with the basic no frills HP etc.
I'm starting to think of these as disposable, I've given up on high end machines.
My latest "on the road" laptop is a $250 HP I got on sale at Best Buy. Does everything I need.

We travel 4 to 5 months of the year. DW & I Each have a laptop with windows 7. DW has an Acer and I have a Lenovo. I think the Lenovo is a much better lap top. We take a cheapo small HP printer along also. Nice to be able to print things out. We can do all our every day things on the laptop. I suppose if I was a professional photographer I may want a desk top. The laptop handles all our routine photos. We back thingss up on thumb drives. If you expect to be without power like dry camping for long periods of time you will probably need a converter. I could be wrong but I don't think any laptop will charge off 12 volt batteries anymore. I use a true sinewave converter. so I don't have to use my generator. We use windows 7 professional and MS office. I also use my laptop for ham radio digital transmissions (psk31) while on the road. I learned to type long ago before electric typewriters so I am hard on keys. I have to disable my laptop internal mouse and use an exteral mouse. Otherwise my hard typing makes the screen jump around a bit. Not a problem and I like the external mouse better anyway. Which windows you get is personal preference. If you are using a windows desk top now I'd go windows. If you are using an apple desk top I'd go with an apple
laptop.
s If you are









eno

We use the Lenovo and Microsoft Surface Pro 3 at work. If your pocket is deep enough I recommend the 16 GB Surface Pro 4 with the detachable keyboard and the surface dock.

We got rid of desk tops years ago and use laptops. They typically have larger screens then notebooks. We have had nothing but bad experiences of late with Best Buy so don't go there any more.

Chromebook is just web tool. No programs, no downloading or installing.
Great for web play. Not a great work tool IMO. We fight over it on the road but I am all about my desktop(home) to get work done.

Chromebooks

I have one and I like it for certain things. They're light, cheap, boot up very quickly and have good battery life. They're great for doing email, facebook and web surfing.

What they are not good for is working on pictures - the processors are not fast enough and they have a very limited amount of RAM that you can't add to.

Most of them don't have a hard drive that anything other than their small operating system can be stored on. In other words if you want to store anything you need to do it on an external device like a thumb drive or Western Digital Passport drive. The other option is to store your info in cloud storage which isn't too good for some of the places you may travel to. A few chromebooks do have storage, but it's very limited. Don't try to work large megapixel pictures on a chromebook.

I don't think you can buy laptops with Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 anymore. You might find an older, but still new, laptop with windows 7 on it. Most likely you'll have to buy one with windows 10. I did and I don't like it at all, others like it.

If your wallet is strong, I'd look at Apple instead of something with windows 10 on it.

If you have a Best Buy handy, go in and look around. They've been doing a good job of training on their people in the last year. When you find something you like, check the internet for pricing and they'll match it.

The good part of buying it from BB is you get it right then at the same price. The bad part of BB is you only get two weeks to return it if you don't like it. With Amazon you get a lot longer return period.

Bill

Notebook and laptop are interchangeable terms. Thinkpad is a model of a laptop made by Lenovo. A Chromebook is a specialized type of notebook that runs the Chrome OS.

Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or 10 is mostly a matter of preference. IMO, any of those are fine, others have strong preferences of one over the others.

What do you plan to do with the laptop? It's important to know what you plan to use the laptop for in order to give any specific advice.