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Post by Bill in the rain on Jan 17, 2022 14:02:39 GMT
I've had a question from a relative who wants to get a cheap laptop for one of her kids to use for school work, zoom, MS word etc.. but not for games.
I'm well out of touch with laptop tech these days, especially low-end stuff, so I'm not sure what's important. There was a good review for an IdeaPad 3 14inch that they saw, but the CPU is different from the many versions available on the lenovo website, so it's very confusing for them (and me!).
If it's not for gaming, I'm not sure how much things like the different CPU or amounts of memory matter. Budget is max 300gpb.
These were the ones they were looking at:
but the review they saw had a Ryzen 5 5500U processor and 8gb of ram.
Any thoughts, or any decent alternatives that anyone knows?
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Post by gamingdave on Jan 17, 2022 14:11:25 GMT
I got my 11 year old this for xmas: www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B095C1F4BS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s03?ie=UTF8&th=1It's a Chromebook, so no Office but has Google Docs which is a perfectly suitable substitute, unless the school requires Word specifically (which you could run in browser anyway). She uses it for homework, zoom/skype with family and friends, and it runs all her streaming platforms and Roblox. It's a great bit of kit for the money, the keyboard is fine though not going to win awards and it's fast and responsive opening apps and for general use. Screen isn't amazing, but it seems clear and bright and wouldn't expect better for the money.
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gray
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Post by gray on Jan 17, 2022 14:21:43 GMT
Most schools are full of Chromebooks. Suppliers will offer massive discounts to the education sector as they're pretty much the only people buying them. If your relative contacts their child's school they may be able to offer one at a reduced cost.
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H-alphaFox
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Post by H-alphaFox on Jan 17, 2022 15:25:03 GMT
We went through 3 Lenovos before getting HPs for all of us. Very happy with them, let me find a magnifying glass to see what model they are.
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H-alphaFox
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Post by H-alphaFox on Jan 17, 2022 15:35:19 GMT
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Post by Bill in the rain on Jan 18, 2022 2:04:15 GMT
Lots of these kinda laptops seem to offer different versions depending on region, or different options for things like CPU or memory. Given the use case, how much would those differences actually matter? I know for a gaming PC we get all obsessed over different CPUs or Graphics cards, but for a chromebook or windows S laptop, would it make much difference?
I will check how much MS Office is a requirement. My first thought was Chromebook too, but I wasn't sure if MS Office was available on that.
Do Chromebooks need a permanent internet connection? I know a lot of apps should have basic offline functionality, but I don't know how extensive that is.
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Post by LegendaryApe on Jan 18, 2022 7:41:04 GMT
I read the thread title as "Cheap laptop for no-brain kids?"
Carry on.
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mrpon
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Post by mrpon on Jan 18, 2022 7:57:41 GMT
Been on the gas & air again Mr Ape?
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Post by LegendaryApe on Jan 18, 2022 8:05:01 GMT
Just general lack of sleep. Even today's Wordle defeated me.
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H-alphaFox
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Post by H-alphaFox on Jan 18, 2022 10:26:10 GMT
Lots of these kinda laptops seem to offer different versions depending on region, or different options for things like CPU or memory. Given the use case, how much would those differences actually matter? I know for a gaming PC we get all obsessed over different CPUs or Graphics cards, but for a chromebook or windows S laptop, would it make much difference? I will check how much MS Office is a requirement. My first thought was Chromebook too, but I wasn't sure if MS Office was available on that. Do Chromebooks need a permanent internet connection? I know a lot of apps should have basic offline functionality, but I don't know how extensive that is. I don't think there is a great deal of difference once you find your price point really, you may get slightly better specs for the same price on last years model for example but beyond that they should all do the same thing. Also was never sure why Chromebooks or Windows S are even a thing to begin with they are basically a crap OS that can't do what you may necessarily want it to do. Sure you say it's just for school as ours are but kids will still use it for other things. I'd be shitty if I wanted a Ps5 and got a PS3 instead. The big disappointment when our kids got theirs was the discovery they couldn't play many games on them, it was tragic as they had built up to it but, well.... it's for school. As long as the kid is not an up and coming graphic artist then the specs are really secondary to just getting the job done. Like I said I can't fault the HPs yet, if it was me I'd find one at the price point with full windows and get that. My personal laptops have always needed some type of minimum specs to run specific software that I use regularly but I have always paid the least possible for them and something like an i3 with 4gb ram is more than enough for my needs.
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Post by Warrender on Jan 18, 2022 11:53:25 GMT
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myk
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Post by myk on Jan 18, 2022 12:52:12 GMT
was really interesting on that LTT video how much the OS support dates change across different models
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deebs
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Post by deebs on Jan 18, 2022 14:15:18 GMT
I bought a small chromebook a few years ago, decent battery life, fine for browsing and whatever, runs android apps. It's alright but I wouldn't put much stock in it for anything more than that.
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111
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Post by 111 on Jan 18, 2022 18:45:37 GMT
I'd argue laptops have been at the point for a while now where if you just want to do basic web/Word/Zoom etc. tasks they're all basically fine. If you're not doing anything power-hungry then what you make of the keyboard/touchpad/screen etc. are probably going to have a more significant effect on your day-to-day experience than differences in any of the internal components.
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Post by Bill in the rain on Jan 18, 2022 23:39:12 GMT
The big disappointment when our kids got theirs was the discovery they couldn't play many games on them, it was tragic as they had built up to it but, well.... it's for school. I think that would be considered a positive in this case. Which I can sympathise with.
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Post by theguy on Jan 21, 2022 9:11:00 GMT
Saw this on HUKD, doesn't seem bad for the price
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