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

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Where would you go and what would you buy? Alicia, the owner of the market where I help out and use the modem has six hundred dollars and change to purchase 2 laptops for 2 grandsons. They surf the net and play video games. I would believe 15.6" size offers the best value battery RAM and storage for the buck? Above all else I must avoid possible land mines where I buy something then find out it's bad after they get here. Alicia has the Spanish Windows 7 program plus profession office in Spanish.

Links hints warnings tips and suggestions much appreciated!

[MEXICOWANDERER]

The things are going to a Mexican friend. The family does not speak a word of English. Also the $600 limit applies $300 each. This is sounding like it's a little over my head - non replaceable batteries. A 300 dollar laptop costs 550 dollars down here. Well at least I am happy with an old Gateway 🙂
A neat external disk got me addicted to an HBO British series "called Strike Back". (3rd season?). Wish there was more. The Gateway is chock full of Data Sheets, White Papers, formulae, schematics, and lazy tools for calculations. But in a year amd a half the hard drive filled 8.7 Gb. Lots of room left even though storage capacity is 1.7 Gb. Only 2 Gb.3

[qtla9111]

Walmart Mexico has this on their website for $300 U.S. However, as a consultant is Mexican schools as well as trainer on school platforms for English and Math, as someone else mentioned a tablet for school might be better.

They seem to work best, fit easily in their backpack and go for as little as 700 pesos at Hemsa stores. The battery lasts long and there is no need to connect taking into consideration the number of outlets available in a school classroom.

The tablets are the "in" thing and are easily replaced should something happen to them. Some allow use of USB so students can bring their work to school and display it on the projector via teachers' laptops or school equipment.

The Mexican market has very similar pricing now to the U.S. on computers and laptops.

[Bob_Shaw]

I bought a nice HP at Sam's Club for $299. It's got an i3 processor, 8 gig of Ram and a terabyte hard drive and a 17.3" screen, and runs Windows 10..

[RoyB]

RLS7201 wrote:
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

My DC requirement for my DELL INSPIRON 17R5737 is 19.5VDC @ 3.3A and uses a standard round DC connector with center pin on the DC output cable that plugs into the laptop.

The DELL 6TM1C external Transformer does have a three wire connection to 120VAC which I assume is two 120VAC wires and a ground connection... The DC output from this transformer uses a long cable with a standard size round DC connector that plugs into the laptop.

To run from an external DC Power Supply would only require the round standard DC connector plug and a +19.5VDC @ 3.34DC Amps capacity????

I don't see any problem running this laptop using an external DC power supply that would have 19.5VDC @ 3.34A capacity available.

I don't think I understand your comment about the three wire connection...

Roy Ken

[wildtoad]

Do the kids really need a laptop versus a tablet? Playing games and surfing the web can easily be done of a IOS device. If they don't need office apps then no need to deal with the complications of a Windows device.

[accsys]

Mex, when I replaced mine a few years ago, I didn't want Win 10 so I purchased a refurbished Acer unit from Staples that had lots of power, memory and Win 7 for much less than the new ones. It has served me well for the last two years. You might check out their refurbished units as the inventory changes frequently.

[RLS7201]

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

[RoyB]

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

[evanrem]

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.

[DandD2015]

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

[Trackrig]

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