Oppo lend me your wisdom!

"CalzoneGolem" (calzonegolem) 12/18/2013 at 11:08 • Filed to: None

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My wife wants a laptop. I have a budget of $300. She will use it for facebook/candy crush and to do minor editing of pictures (take out red-eye, rotate, etc). Chromebooks are tempting and since she would be going from XP to windows 7 or 8 the learning curve is not going to be a big deal. There seems to be plenty of windows option as well. She doesn't need a high powered machine and she'd prefer to not have a touch screen.

ddavidn > CalzoneGolem 12/18/2013 at 11:12

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Chromebooks and Nexus tablets sound like good options to me. Chromebooks aren't the sturdiest machines ever made, though.

CalzoneGolem > ddavidn 12/18/2013 at 11:15

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A tablet is out. She will not use a touchscreen device.

CalzoneGolem > CalzoneGolem 12/18/2013 at 11:15

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Currently I'm leaning toward this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc…

Walfisch > CalzoneGolem 12/18/2013 at 11:18

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I won't make any suggestions on laptops, there are a bunch of those right now that run great in that price range (plus I rarely look at laptops nowadays). Don't worry too much about the guts for your photo editing. I'd only suggest that you guys look at Pixlr for the photo editing. It runs from a browser, so it's not as demanding for your system's resources, and it's pretty decent with it's filters and retouches.

Ian Duer (320b) > CalzoneGolem 12/18/2013 at 11:19

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That's traditionally been a tough price range to work in. Any screen size requirements?

ddavidn > CalzoneGolem 12/18/2013 at 11:19

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I read that. Haven't had enough coffee yet, sorry. $300 is a pretty small budget, so Chromebook is likely your best option. The thing I would spring for if she needed a 15" screen would be Lenovo's Thinkpad Edge but it comes in at around $450 I think.

Laird Andrew Neby Bradleigh > CalzoneGolem 12/18/2013 at 11:20

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Find a used one with good specs, install Linux Mint. You now have a quite fast/powerful laptop, with a very stable OS that looks quite the same as win XP, but with tons of free software available.

CalzoneGolem > Walfisch 12/18/2013 at 11:20

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Hey, that is pretty slick!

ddavidn > CalzoneGolem 12/18/2013 at 11:20

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I would expect it to last about the same amount of time as a Chromebook.

CalzoneGolem > Ian Duer (320b) 12/18/2013 at 11:20

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Nope.

Walfisch > CalzoneGolem 12/18/2013 at 11:27

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Hehe yep, I was impressed when I first used it. I have the app version on my 4-year old, dual-core Android phone, and it works fine. I also did some light editing on my old HP laptop (i5 dual core from 2009) using that website. So I hope this helps your search.

Ian Duer (320b) > Laird Andrew Neby Bradleigh 12/18/2013 at 11:32

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Easy Linux distros are usually a good bet. The "security through obscurity" approach may not be the best strategy but it works well enough in practice.

Ian Duer (320b) > CalzoneGolem 12/18/2013 at 11:42

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I picked up an Asus netbook years ago and it's still running. Those are sort of like the grandfather of Chromebooks. I think the SSDs are partially what helps with durability, but they are usually quite small when dealing with bargain models, smaller screen sizes (like 11.6 in) also seem less prone to breaking as well as making the unit more portable. I've also had quite good luck with Linux based OSs for day to day computing tasks and there are easy options like Mint if Windows 8 feels too clunky. In any case I'd suggest making a restore image immediately upon unboxing in case some sort of malware irreparably infects the machine.

I'm hesitant to outright recommend anything in this range due to the variable quality but hopefully my general observations above come in handy.

The Dummy Gummy > CalzoneGolem 12/18/2013 at 13:40

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Asus have some nice ones that will fall right into that $300 budget. They come with Win 8 as well so you will have the latest option. My only suggestion if you do get a computer with Windows 7/8 is that it has at least 4gb of ram. It is painfully slow otherwise.