Be Excellent To Each Other

It must have been at least a couple of weeks since we've had one of these threads...

My wife has just decided that she needs a laptop to do her work on (she's a teacher) and thinks that having her own laptop would mean she wouldn't need to use my PC. I'm all for this.

She's just sent me this https://www.aldi.co.uk/medion-11-6%22-n ... 9165808600

Is it any good? I used to know about PCs but I don't need to anymore because I've got you lot. I know the storage on that one isn't fantastic but she'll be working off memory sticks a lot of the time anyway. Also, that one doesn't say anything about Wifi. Surely it has Wifi? Everything has Wifi doesn't it?

It is not good.

It is not any good. If she wants a laptop to work on I'd say you're looking to spend £400+ to get anything you won't hate yourself for buying.

In this case, 64Gb is too small and Intel Atoms are shitty processors.

Buy a macbook air then put it in a cupboard and go back to using your old hp because jstvdyydfhgfg

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-ideapad ... 01HU6E4OE/

That's a bit more expensive, but it's not a bad little box for the money.

Wait Craster has found a better one.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B01KM5 ... B01HU6E4OE

It's a refurb, but it's an insanely good spec for the price

Is there a budget? An upper limit?

Edit: Screw that, get Craster one

Holy shit, people are still trying to sell things with Atom CPUs in them? Madness.



Given that there isn't I'm going to recommend either this or this

Is the school paying?

I'm pretty sure this will be a no unfortunately. If they were, then I'd go for Bambas first option because that's probably how much they'd be willing to contribute.

'Boarders'? Is that just a typo for 'borders' or does it mean something else (like surfers... because they surf(?) the web...? Surely not...)

It's a typo because it's a shit website.

Bear in mind she can get discounted copies of Windows and Office 365 as a teacher.

With that thought won't she also get the Apple education discount, which I believe is quite large, like 30%

My parents--with me chipping in--are looking to get my sister a new laptop for Christmas. Black Friday might help with that of course but I was wondering if anyone had any current recommendations? Budget about £500 and preferably an SSD for performance; though it doesn't have to be particularly capacious. No particular use cases but no worries about gaming so just something decent for every day use that'll hopefully last her a while.

This one caught my eye on initial investigation:

https://www.ebuyer.com/805723-hp-250-g6 ... sy44es-abu

It's got an older 7 series CPU which apparently is nowhere near as fast as the newer ones but those command a higher price as you'd expect.

Does it have to be brand new? I picked up a second hand ThinkPad X240 off eBay for £250 (or was it £300, can't remember - either way, not a huge amount) and the spec is great - Core i7 with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD (which I've since changed for a 960GB one that I had lying around from an old PC)

It's light, classes as an ultrabook so is very portable, and is decently fast. No hardcore gaming or anything though.

It doesn't necessarily have to be new but I'm not fucking around with eBay because people are arseholes.

Is this still good? I need a laptop as mines just shat itself. If I lean on the left corner with about the weight of my resting hand the screen goes all matrix and I have to power cycle it. Needs to be good enough to do interneting, documentsing and some light other business doing.

Well it's the same machine it was a year ago, so sure.

If I was picking something out of the Amazon list of refurbished right now it's probably be this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-EliteBook-U ... ref=plSrch

Exactly what I was hoping someone would do! Cranks Thaster!

Get a ThinkPad X240 off eBay. Paid £250 for mine, Core i7 with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD (which I then replaced with a 960GB one)

Thanks but I bought the one cras suggested, no patience, me.

I have that one, an ex work laptop. It is quite capable, for office and a few games.

That is my current work laptop, it is better than the other one...

I feel good about this now. Thx kov

HP laptops are a bit shite IME.

I am catching up

I'm on the cusp of getting my niece a Chromebook as a replacement for the Nexus 9 + Bluetooth keyboard she was using prior to the N9s touchscreen packing in entirely. Its purpose will be school work and I've already primed her to start playing with Docs/Slides as replacements for Word/PowerPoint. Are there any other concerns or factors to be taken into account with Chromebooks? Bearing in mind that the model I'm looking at (budget = £400) has Android app support and a touchscreen:

https://uk-store.acer.com/acer-chromebo ... 1ht-silver

And I'm mainly asking this as I have literally zero personal experience of Chrome OS so I'm more than a little nervous about this option.

For £400, why would you not get a proper laptop? Is it a weight thing?

I would check how she does her schoolwork now. They can be incredibly picky about how it has to be done.

Initially it was a budget limitation, until I decided to chuck a bit more cash at the problem. I did offer them the choice of a proper laptop but she liked the idea of continuing to use a device that had a touchscreen.

Currently she's using the Nexus 9 with a Bluetooth keyboard--and would still be happy doing that if the screen hadn't died--so I'm assuming that's all good. The only slight issue there is that proper MS Office on Android requires a paid subscription if the screen size goes over 10 inches so that's not going to happen. As long as stuff can be saved off in docx or pptx though I imagine it'll be fine.

ETA: and I'm never in a million years going to get that level of detailed info out of my sister or niece anyway so I don't think that could ever factor into decisions.