I'm finding $300 Acer laptop (or netbook, one of their Inspire line) loaded with Linux surprisingly usable. (It was preloaded with Linpus, but I've replaced with my own.) At 1.10 GHz Dual-Core, 4GB RAM, it's a bit slow at times, but as long as I'm not running intensive process on it, it's very usable on the go machine. (Mainly, TeX, translations, web stuff, browsing, and occasional spreadsheet, is what I do on the machine.) I do have a desktop machine for things that requires more power.
We Need a Better PC
71–80 of 699 posts
Re: We Need a Better PC
#72Why is a decent website relevant at all? Would it make buying a laptop easier? Sure. But 90% of consumers are going to do almost all of their research off-site and enter the lenovo looking for specific products or categories. Not everyone follows the Apple-Disney ethos of design every consumer facing thing to be flawless. I haven't done the research but I bet you could see lenovo pages ranking higher for long-tail ke…
Here is the only way to shop Lenovo: http://psref.lenovo.com/ Every SKU, every option, every detail, in a PDF.
I'd say there's a better way if you're on a budget:
http://outlet.lenovo.com/outlet_us/
http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals
etc.
Re: We Need a Better PC
#73What do you think of the Novena?
https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena
If you want to make a good laptop, there are people doing that, in an open hardware and open source way.
Re: We Need a Better PC
#74I'm very happy with my Asus UX305F. I have Linux installed, everything except brightness keys works perfectly. Great build quality, mate screen, battery lasts very long. And it was cheaper than most of what people mention here. For CPU intense task, I just use my desktop.
Re: We Need a Better PC
#75Do you like the MacBook but don't like the OS? go ahead and change it, you can have triple boot. Tiny fonts and pop ups doesn't have anything to do with the machine you are going to buy (unless you also want the website). HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad. And last but not least I would like to give this entry the RAGE post award, nomination points for What I want is a computer with: -Decen…
"HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad."
I've been burned so badly by an HP laptop, that I'm unlikely to ever buy another HP product in any category. It is horrifically bad. Damned near everything is wrong with it. It also had some crapware, and the system restore partition didn't work...so I had a dead laptop for two weeks waiting for physical restore media to arrive (that I paid $10+shipping for). Specs were great, among the highest end available at the time. The quality, on the other hand, has been worse than any computer I've ever owned.
I guess is isn't all that constructive as comments go, but I feel ethically obligated to steer people away from considering HP laptops.
Re: We Need a Better PC
#76Is Samsung Series 9 still a thing? When I bought mine it was thinner than the MB Air at that point, similar rigid aluminum build quality.
Re: We Need a Better PC
#77I'm surprised not to see a link to the Librem laptops: https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-13. They're an attempt to solve the problem being posited, AFAICT, though they ship with Linux, not Windows.
I gave $10 to their initial Kickstarter but have never used one.
Re: We Need a Better PC
#78Avoid the dell developers edition xps13. There's no end key, the trackpad is unusable. Even worse, avoid getting the windows version and installing Linux on that: the trackpad is even less unusable (resets to lower corner intermittently on clicks), and in order to get the wi-fi working I had to recompile the kernel driver telling it that it was FOSS.
Is the Dev edition the same as the Skylake 9350?
Re: We Need a Better PC
#79I've bought old thinkpad T-series on ebay for ~$300, installed arch, and moved on with my life. I keep most of my relevant data on git repos or a home server. If it dies, which usually happens after a good few years, I just get a new one. Not ideal, and certainly not for everybody, but a reasonable option if it fits your needs.
Can you get IPS screens on those?
Re: We Need a Better PC
#80Why not by a Chromebook Pixel (2015)? Seriously.