Posted on 04/13/2018 5:07:02 PM PDT by Don W
The only question is; what do you do with your laptop?
If you just browse the web and listen to mp3’s I’d just buy the cheapest thing you can buy that has 4GB RAM and enough storage you need. The last two laptops I’ve bought my wife, whom would be quick to complain(!), cost me $299 each time - and this is all she does with it.
If you do high end games then get the best machine you can afford, having a high end GPU, an SSD, 16GB of high speed RAM, and at least an i5.
Anything else is somewhere in-between. SSD’s make everything generally better.
Macbooks have excellent battery life vs Windows.
—
That, and the MacBook weighs just 2 lbs. great if you’re carrying it in a briefcase or backpack.
I suggest you try BRAVE browser.
It does a great job of filtering out third-party advertising on webpages.
Pages render much faster and Brave also does not track your browsing.
The pages will look a bit strange because there will be large blank spaces where the advertising was supposed to go but it does not bother me.
It is still a little buggy on my iPad and crashes once in a while, but it is worth it. It does not crash my iPad when it crashes.
Why are the specs on these so lo? These are old. What is your budget?
Used to work well.
I'm using a 6 year old HP laptop right now. I replaced it with a new HP laptop a year ago. I replaced that one with a different HP 8 months ago. I replaced that one with an HP desktop 4 months ago.
So why am I using the 6 year old machine? The new ones are crap.
I bought a Dell at Costco. Works fine. The wife’s mac book bit the dust and I wasn’t interested in a replacement that as was ridiculously proprietary as the mac.
I like the higher powered processor. It won’t be obsolete as soon as the others.
I don’t need super-speed or intense graphics. I write, photo manipulation, and surfing. No movies, streaming for music, I only need a simple box.
Heck I am typing this on Asus Transformer with 2GB of RAM running Windows 10. :-)
The OP said he wants this for light duty word processing and surfing. IMO he should buy the cheapest device that meets his needs, back up his photos and docs regularly and not overthink this decision.
A light duty computer is a cheap disposable commodity. Use it til it dies than just buy another one.
I’ve bought refurbs without any problems, but keep in mind parts that have mileage will wear out sooner. Things like the clock battery.
I don't like slow.
This is to replace a dying Toshiba Satellite L305D.
I am only replacing it because a cap on the motherboard has popped, and it is S_L_O_W to boot, and shuts down when trying to update or load programs other than Brave or IE. Edge even shuts it down.
I have saved most of my important data, and will migrate to the new box when I get it.
I have a nice acer that has stood the test of time.
Although if I could have a reboot of my sony viao...
The thing is, the computers you listed are all so old that I would expect them to have various problems: e.g., hard drives near failure, batteries at end of service life, etc. The Mac you listed would be something like $50 used. What is your budget?
These are factory refurbished units I am looking at, all under $300 CDN including shipping.
I know what you mean. If a replacement motherboard wasn't so overpriced, I would buy and install a new one in the Toshiba. It's been a real trooper for me, and I'm very comfortable with it.
I don’t believe they’re factory refurbished—Apple does not, to my knowledge, sell anything like that anymore. That’s a ten year old laptop, and you can’t even get a replacement hard drive for it. If they’re refurbs, I don’t think it’s Apple doing the refurbishing. In any event, I wouldn’t buy any of the computers you listed.
Why don’t you get something like a new Chromebook, which would be in your price range and brand new?
For “nice” I love my ASUS ROG G752VT-DH72 17 Inch Gaming Laptop. Actually, mine is a little older version (12G memory), but it is beautiful and awesomely powerful (but also heavy and big/bulky).
What I use 80% of the time, however, is the $120 HP Chromebook that I bought from a FB for-sale page. Think of it as a “Macbook Air without requiring taking out a second mortgage”.
If one doesn’t have a need for MS Office, and is not a hardcore gamer (there plenty of decent games available for Chromebooks), and if one spends 95% of their time using a browser, then a Chromebook is fantastic. (They are also good to give to the more elderly, unsophisticated users, as they are not targeted by the great majority of viruses).
I over-typed: they are not refurbed by the MFR, they are done by the supplier I found.
My point is, the parts are no longer available. Buying a laptop that old is just a waste of money.
Go to whatever the equivalent of Walmart is there and get an inexpensive new laptop. There are heaps of them available for your price range.
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