If You Had $300 To Spend On A Laptop...

One caveat about HP & Dell LTs is there 3 wire power supply. You can NOT use an aftermarket power supply with them. I like running a after market DC-DC power supply in the MH. With a HP or Dell, you'll need to fire up an inverter when off grid.

Richard

MEX - I replaced all of my old TABLETS and XP PCs with sales on HSN and QVS... Most of them offered the top of the line HP and DELL laptops deals with extra things included and 5 easy payments of around $100 a month... All was 3 day service.... They all came loaded down with software included and good deals on renting programs which seems to be the way they are done these days...

This DELL I am using here is INSPIRON 17R5737 with INTEL CORE i7-4500 CPU - @ 1.80 Ghz 8.00GB ram 64Bit X64 based processor...

That was the only way I get the top of the line units with time payments with no interest...

This thing screams compared to my old DELL XP-PLUS M90 Workstation machine I was using...

Roy Ken

You are not going to be playing any high end games on a $300 dollar laptop. It will be good for surfing the web and doing homework and such. Instead I would look at an I pad mini or some other tablet. Both my kids have one and my 5th grader gets a ton of use out of it. She watches TV, plays games, chats and videos with friends and surfs the web on it. The only time she uses the laptop is for homework. Given the choice between the two the tablet would be the route I would go. Walmart has the mini for about $275. One thing to note is if they cant hook up the internet all the time the tablet might not be the best route to go.

Some like Chromebooks because they start up faster, are cheaper to begin with. https://www.cnet.com/search/?query=Chromebook

For your purposes stay away from the Chromebooks. You won't be able to load the Microsoft suite of programs on it. They get great battery life, but have very little storage and weak chips. They're great for doing email and searching the web, but that's about it. I have one, it's great to travel with but not for anything like working on my pictures. I have to wait to do that until I get home.

You will have to work with word programs like Google Docs, the same goes for spread sheets - all of it is stored in the cloud and you don't have decent access at home to use those.

When buying a new computer be sure to find out what programs it comes with. If if doesn't come with MS Word and Excel, you'll have to pay more for those. Right now on Amazon they range from $200 - $300 And if a sales person tells you that it does come with them, make sure they're not just a temporary demo load that will stop working in a couple of months until you pay for them.

Also check on removable / exchangeable batteries. Very few if any laptops have that feature anymore.

Also, I don't think you want to mess with Windows 10. Now everyone don't get your panties in a wad over that comment - I'm saying that being somewhat familiar with Mex, that I don't think he want's to mess with WIN10 so he needs to make sure what he's buying before he gets a surprise and no one to help him when he gets home.

It is interesting what comes up if you type CHEAP LAPTOP into Amazon.

Bill