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this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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Asklemmy
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With the preface of "cheap", do not ever buy a laptop under $500. They are simply underspecced by the time they get that low, and will give a bad experience.
I would also recommend something like a Lenovo ThinkPad, they are pretty damn tough. Maybe a ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 Intel. Spec it out to 16gb of memory and even the i3 processor will get your job done fine in Linux, while landing in under $650. Plus they have removable M.2 SSD's that can be changed out for a higher capacity very easily, and much much cheaper than the $300 they charge to kit it with a 1tb drive...
This is a lot less true than it was five years ago. Web browsing and basic word editing has not become harder to do in the past ten years, but hardware has made some major leaps. (thanks amd) So as long as it has an ssd and a semi modern (within five years) processor, it will do a great job of handling homework and 4k video. With windows replaced with linux, it'll do all those things and feel snappy while it does it.
Avoid sub 100$ laptops, and keep a skeptical eye on anything between that and 400$, but it can absolutely be done.
I'm biased, but the dell inspiron laptops that businesses offload are perfect for this sort of task. They have connectivity out the wazoo (useful for that outdated projector in the seldom used classroom) and their batteries are easily replaced.
Basic word editing and especially web browsing absolutely has gotten harder to do in the past ten years. Word processors used to fit on a floppy disk, now they wouldn't fit on a Blu-Ray, and web pages are heavier than they have ever been, even basic text is some fucking java applet.
I'm sorry, but, no, you're not even close with the size comparison. Office 2021 is 4gb, libreoffice and office 365 are smaller than that. The cheapest bluray will hold 25gb.
Obviously office programs have not become easier to run (with libreoffice maybe being an exception), but processing power has vastly outpaced whatever new requirements they've gained.
Shit like teams needs a supercomputer to run well, and will be slow on everything else. There is no point in buying a top of the line laptop just to keep teams or a badly made website from lagging.
People haven't seriously used floppy disks for twenty years now.
Well my point was less of an indictment of modern computers, and more an indictment of web designers and to an extent application programmers, who are increasingly the same crowd with shit technology like Electron.
Seems like we had a lot of computing tasks SOLVED in the 90's, but they expand to take up their container. A Raspberry Pi will run laps around the PC I grew up with, but it's considered pathetically underpowered by today's standards.
My point is that for office tasks, a 150$ laptop isn't just an option, it honestly will run office tasks incredibly well. Telling someone to not spend less than $500 on a laptop because it will run horribly is almost ten year old advice, and not helpful in 2023.
The latitude 5490 sells for 150$ and has everything a person running office stuff would want.