My boss is giving me $500 to get a laptop so I can go back to school.
What should I get? I don't need anything too fancy: just need to be able to do research and write essays and potentially attend online classes.
My boss is giving me $500 to get a laptop so I can go back to school. What should I get?
whatever you do, don't let some autismo on here talk you into buying a decade old thinkpad.
This to some degree
Buy any light laptop that can get you as many hours as possible on one charge.
get the m1 macbook air base model and make sure you used the education store to get the $100 dollar discount (apple has faith in humanity and wont even ask for proof). battery lasts 13 hours with heavy use. keyboard is one of the best non-mechanical i've used. cant really go wrong, macos is comfy although limited in certain areas.
can't be beat for the price, literally. you only get ripped off with apple when you start trying to upgrade but 8gb flies on this machine, 256 storage is subjectively shit though
Is there any reason not to just go the easy route and get a Chromebook?
For whatever reason I feel completely lost in this world as far as research, and even looking at top ten lists has me scratching my head.
Yeah looking at lists can be a rabbit hole, but yeah Chromebook is an option but maybe OP needs to use windows or any other distro that isnt chromeOS, (idk if you can run other distros from a chromebook) theres also macbooks but i doubt a good one fits in a $500 budget
Chromebooks are great, the only downside is selling your soul to google. it can run android apps and everything syncs to cloud, so if your machine flies off a cliff you don't lose anything and it's cheap to replace.
I literally do not care, and I already have an Android phone, so I may just get a Chromebook.
You are wording this as if you don't have a PC and you are posting from a phone, make this clear:
You have a good PC, and the laptop is not going to be your main PC.
Otherwise a Chromebook is only something a parent would buy for their kid.
It really isn't a good laptop, just good enough (and cheap enough that you wont pay for a accident coverage warranty) since laptops could be so much better at around the $1000 mark.
I mean, I don't have a PC, and I've never had a PC.
I really just need a laptop for this specific purpose.
Anon, get yourself a nice laptop if you have the money for it.
Watch youtube reviews videos of the laptop before you buy it, and make sure to look at multiple videos, maybe you find a laptop comparison laptop review, for laptops with the same price range you can watch a side by side review. (remember, every reviewer on youtube makes money from the Amazon referral link in the description, this is why comparison videos are better because the youtuber makes money without bias of wanting people to click that link and buy, and they would make like $50 if you bought a $1000 product).
Because chromeos sucks and so does the keyboard.
Op, just go on ebay and amazon and pull up laptops within your budget, make a lits of whatever you don't reject for one reason or another, and compare the CPUs on a CPU benchmark site and then pick whatever you like the most.
do NOT get a chromebook
windows or mac, choose one
Unfortunately this. I love ThinkPads, but for your use case it probably isn't enough. Even if you upgrade the ram and drives, the CPU just won't cut it for a lot modern web browsing.
Please realize that decade old Thinkpads are not the think dinosaur looking ones anymore, what you're referring to at this point is something like a T440p or T450, both of which are still very usable
Get a CrowPi2. You can stick an 8gb Raspi 4 in it and it's got a bunch of sensors and motors and stuff and a bunch of electronics and programming coursework in it.
Easy daily driver if you just need to take notes and stream stuff. Great learning opportunity if you want it.
Autismo kicking hard
This is the tech themed board of an anime site. Who do you expect to go here if not otaku tech enthusiasts? If you dislike it why don't you just hang out on Twitter or StackOverflow?
>Avoiding anime on twitter
You're telling them to go straight to the source of autismo
Look at this and tell me it isn't based though
https://www.crowpi.cc/collections/crowpi/products/crowpi2-all-in-one-raspberry-pi-laptop-stem-learning-platform
In my opinion it does but i wouldn't use it for work lol
If you get the standard package of the lite version of the crowpi 2 you lose all the censors and motors and stuff and get a more normietastic laptop, but it's still full of programming lessons and powered by a raspi4. And it fits your under $500 budget that way.
https://www.crowpi.cc/collections/crowpi/products/crowpi-l
>https://www.crowpi.cc/collections/crowpi/products/crowpi-l
lol imagine recommending that to the guy.
That thing is clearly meant for children. The main picture is showing scratch lmao.
You can put a different OS on it anon. It's just an enclosure for a raspi 4 SBC.
At least it has a 1080 screen unlike a lot of old Thinkpads that are still popular.
Is that the one that comes with Mathematica?
Not sure if it ships with it specifically, but Mathematica is bundled with NOOBS, so you can put it easily on a Raspi 4. I think there is also a script or something to do it on this page:
https://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/
Get 50 of these and buy all the cars in Roblox Jailbreak.
Then ask your employee for $1500 for the M2 Air.
Profit
you should buy a decade old thinkpad
I'd say pick the best store available at hand, probably directly from the brand you're buying if they have a nice discount or Amazon, Best Buy, (Amazon has refurbished things sometimes just a heads up), and use this site https://www.notebookcheck.net/ to check laptops, they rank them and even have a survey based on your budget, interests, etc. Best brands are HP, Dell, Lenovo and Asus IMO. They have both shit and great devices
Correction, rather than a survey its like a laptop picker test
$500 doesnt go very far these days
I could try for a good used one: don't need any sort of gaming capabilities or much more than
>writing and turning in schoolwork
>email
>browser
>whatever might be necessary for online classes
Anything light and fast ig so maybe get a Hp laptop, those never failed me
Just get a Chromebook. Find you don't like Chrome OS? It's easy enough to put Wangdows or Loonix on it.
How are some Chromebooks able to run with 4gb of ram...
Anyways i cant think of a new laptop thats $500 honestly. Even if you get a Chromebook with low specs you know google made it so it can atleast run the web browser no matter what.
Ypu coukd also tell your boss al, you coukd find was a chromebook and see if hell give you more money.
Put it all into bitcoin and buy 100 laptops when it shoots back up
you should buy a decade old thinkpad AND pocket the difference, which will be something like $400
you already have a laptop, why do you need to buy one specially for school
bonus, you can libreboot the thinkpad and then resell it for ten times what you originally paid to some non-autist poser
Why would anybody buy a used stinkpad with libreboot when they could buy a brand new one with coreboot from system76?
id get a used 17" precision workstation off craigslist, 7720 or better, but your boss is probably gonna want an invoice so just get some homosexual convertible from the store
OP here I might be able to do this. Pretty sure he's just gonna ask for the link and use his credit card to purchase since it is a small business.
you already have an iphone? mac curious?
get a macbook air, get it refurbished from the official refurbished store to get $200 off (if you aren't accepted in university, but if anon is right about not needing proof, you might be able to combine the discount? probably not).
The nice thing about the macbook air is the hardware (speakers were always good, on the m2 the camera is 1080p), the bad part is the low amount of non-upgradable storage space.
If you don't care about the camera or speakers, or you like using windows, you could get a dell xps 13 for a premium laptop with lots of storage and a nice display, still a very expensive laptop (make sure to not get the touchscreen version, and get the anti-glare display).
If you literally don't care and you have a monster PC desktop at home, get a chromebook.
There are also walmart RGB gaming laptops that are very fairly priced, but the displays and speakers and camera are always dog garbage most people plug a 2nd display with headphones when they use it like a desktop and if they are smart they would buy a laptop riser to help with airflow. But you get a gtx 1650 which can play a few games which is amazing for the price.
Also I highly recommend buying from a walk in Walmart store so you can try out the gaming laptop, or even the dell xps before you buy it, and you can also do the same thing for a macbook air since genius stores are everywhere.
just get a regular dell or hp, they both have a plain jane line of regular laptops for normal people. you just have to go to their site and not like a retailer
Just go to amazon.com and click under 500 and pick one tbh
There's some decent laptops still
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-zenbook-14-laptop-amd-ryzen-5-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-mx450-256gb-ssd-light-grey/6460365.p?skuId=6460365
Why does he need nvidia graphics for if he's just going to use it for work.
Wtf g you can't find a laptop with +8gb of ram and 512gb storage for $500 or something?
What kind of techies are you?
Personally I just know to never get an acer, that brand sucks.
Find one then techie
Is ryzen any good?
It'll be fine for what you're doing.
Long term I'd be concerned about that 8gB of RAM which you can't upgrade unless you're going to run Linux on it anyway (which you should), but it'd still be better than just about any chromebook.
8 gigabytes of LPDDR4X is literally perfectly fine.
Alright anons, I'm gonna listen to you and go for this zenbook.
I appreciate all the help.
if your boss allows it, you could try to include the price of a laptop case too, which you don't want a cheap $20 soft case (and don't buy the warranty coverage unless you are feeling unlucky, because the laptop is only $500, and warranty is $200, and you get a 1 year limited warranty but* they wont fix if you broke it), you need a hard case if you are throwing that in your backpack or whatever, and they start at $60.
I know I am suggesting a pelican case is overkill, but check this out:
Note the zenbook 14 is 12.5 by 8.18.
The interior of the pelican case is 14.29 x 10.37.
https://www.amazon.com/PELICAN-PLO1085-14-Inch-Watertight-Hardback/dp/B006C21MCU
Sadly with 14" there is nothing that really fits your size with worthy protection.
Oh nevermind, this wont fit in any backpacks...
That's probably why everyone buys sleeves...
Also you are supposed to cut little cubes out of the bottom side.
But hey, it can also fit 2 handguns, maybe even a short rifle!
just use a backpack, that's what everyone in college did
well except for that one autist with a suitcase/sling bag/ whatever
Even though you don't have a iphone, the future of Windows and Microsoft is bleak, I think they fricked up Windows 11, and chrome OS is just a browser, keyboard, and mouse. The executives (and stock holders) are kind of out of touch with the choices they make (like forcing updates with a gun pointed at your head).
Many people love windows because of video games, which is a big deal for many people, and you might even consider taking part of the pc master race Steam sales, you just need a laptop with any GPU and you can refund any game with less than 2 hours, if your laptop can't run the game.
But the macbook air M1 (or if you wait less than a month, you can get the new M2) is a laptop with no compromises (for it's price). And it might even convince you to switch your phone with an iphone (if you think your phone needs an upgrade in a few years due to battery life).
But it's not incorrect that apple is expensive, and easy to break (get apple care, or pay for a heavy duty laptop case).
The main reason why people don't get macbooks is because they aren't used to a mouse with only 1 button (usually there is a left and right, you can right click but you need to hold down a key or plug in a mouse), and the start menu is in a different place and the task bar (open applications) is kinda confusing, and sometimes there's menu stuff at the top of the bar related to the application but it's hard to notice when not in full screen when in windows it's connected to the window.
Overall they are very different OS's and you have to opportunity to learn apple's OS without being used to windows (unless you used windows a lot at school).
But the zenbook linked for $500 is actually really good. I approve (I really don't have any complaints for it, other than only 8gb of non upgradable RAM, which is FINE, and you can upgrade the SSD easily), and if it turns out windows 11 is really bad you could install linux.
windows 11 just feel like more of the same to me.
If people aren't using windows what are they using? linux?
if windows can avoid creating a update that horribly breaks the system for a decade, I would consider it a good OS.
sadly I think the last time that happened was a ~month ago.
get a used X280 or newer thinkpad
Just get a Dell Latitude and call it a day
Chinkpad 420 is the only reasonable choice.
Prob an education laptop with Linux or a Chromebook will do.
Sis bought pic related for $250. She only uses it for homework. I installed Debian 11/GNOME and OnlyOffice and works flawlessly.
Literally buy an M1 Air. You can get very good edu pricing.
the nicest chromebook you can find in that price bracket, or see what your school offers in regards to discounts on Apple. The M1 Macbook air is untouched for screen quality/battery life.
semen covered thinkpad x200t