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Author Topic: How does one pick a laptop?  (Read 2902 times)

Il Palazzo

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Re: How does one pick a laptop?
« Reply #15 on: June 27, 2014, 10:03:12 am »

No, I've never tried one. I used to have a 1GHz Windows laptop not that long ago, and it was pretty dredful, now that I think about it. On the other hand, it was Pentium3, so it's not really fair to compare.

I did a bit of looking around, and it seems unlikely that ASUS chromebooks are upgradeable memory-wise. I did find a few mentions of a 4GB "educational" model of C200, but I'm having a hard time spotting an actual offer.

The upgradeable ones seem to be ACERs of the C7 series, but they only have 1.1GHz processors.

There's a 350$ C720 model available:
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-C720-Chromebook-11-6-Inch-2GB/dp/B00FNPD1VW
(change the optional loadout to 4GB)
Still, only 1.4Ghz. That seems to be a standard as far as chromebooks go, the 2.1 celeron on the ASUS being a somewhat extreme outlier.

Anyway, I don't have an agenda here, so I'm not really interested in persuading you. It's just the best-fitting suggestion I could think of.
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Bumber

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Re: How does one pick a laptop?
« Reply #16 on: June 28, 2014, 03:23:44 am »

If you're planning on installing a Linux/Ubuntu OS, make sure you're getting hardware that you can actually find drivers for. I got an Asus G750(JW?) and couldn't find any drivers for the Broadcom wireless adapter (this issue.) There was an issue with the backlighting, too, and I didn't even want to bother with that. Ended up just installing VirtualBox Lubuntu for when I need to do certain programing stuff. (The host OS is Windows 8.1, which I find bearable after installing Classic Shell and running Ribbon Disabler.)
« Last Edit: June 28, 2014, 03:42:17 am by Bumber »
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gimlet

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Re: How does one pick a laptop?
« Reply #17 on: June 28, 2014, 01:27:31 pm »

Why would I need to go up to $400 when I'm going for those sort of specs?  I think I can find it for a lot less then that with just minimal work:

high rated seller for the laptop with a cpu:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/271526722527?lpid=82

Plus I don't think that is actually much of a "deal" - that auction is for a laptop with no disk drive or OS.  And it uses old DDR2 memory.  Yeah you might be OK with putting linux on it, but by the time you buy a hard drive and possibly more memory (looks like it only comes w/2G), you're well in the price range of a new laptop with similar or better specs and a warranty - I got a Dell I15 2127U with 4G of ram for like $275 at Microcenter last year to use as an "around the house when I don't wanna sit at the desktop/take out once in a while" system.  The CPU is nothing special (but still benches a bit better than the E5500), and the hard drive access is pretty anemic but it's adequate for what I wanted it for.  It's big and heavy enough I really wouldn't want to be carrying it around all the time - even a 9" android tablet is kind of a pain...

If I was looking for a laptop to carry around *all* the time, I'd look hard at Lenovo (sorry not familiar w/their current models, except I have my eye on the Thinkpad 10).  And/or whatever Costco has because I like their return policy + free extension of manu. warranty, but I'd wait for a "deal" because looking at their site it appears pretty easy to beat their current prices at Microcenter or online.
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mainiac

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Re: How does one pick a laptop?
« Reply #18 on: July 02, 2014, 09:46:09 am »

I ended up getting a used samsung series 5 chromebook.  It wasn't what I was looking for (unfortunate the RAM can't be upgraded) but I got a sweetheart deal because I was making a face-to-face purchase instead of an online purchase.  No onto the fun epilogue where I get linux on this baby.

So sorry I didn't take more advantage of all the good advice here but like I said, I wasn't expecting to make a face-to-face purchase that offered a better price in return for less choice.
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