In the market for something cheap, but decent quality. Right now, just have a Chromebook, but thinking I want a "proper" computer. Always used to be a Windows person, but not opposed to Apple, but dont care about the status symbol of it.
Not opposed to new, either, but seems like used or refurbished will be a better deal.
I could imagine installing Linux or something, but not immediately, so it needs to just work out of the box.
USB-C would also be nice. Something smaller and lite weight, but it doesn't have to extremely so.
Also in the market for a new phone. Will probably get an old Pixel, but am curious would you tech nerds recommend these days.
The Palestinian-led BDS campaign asks to boycot HP-laptops , because that company plays a vital role in the opression of Palestinians.
Well, you know what they say about ethical consumption under capitalism
We can't know everything. Don't beat yourself up for it. Now you know it for in the future.
I made a "boycott HP apartheid" banner back in 2014-15 and posted it here. Made all the letters in the HP font too.
Now less of a reason to get one besides HP laptop build quality being kind of arse
Refurb Thinkpads are definitely a good idea since they have good build quality. You could also look into either Dell Latitude or HP Elitebook business laptops. Both are built to be lugged around so they'll also have good build quality.
In so far as phones. Older Pixel, Galaxy S series or OnePlus would be good choices.
what do you want to do with the laptop is a good thing for us to know like what would it be most used for
Get a used fleet unit ThinkPad and throw Linux on it. You can get a great laptop this way at basically any budget.
This has been my last couple laptops, sourced from eBay. $2000 machines become $600 after like four years, and most are in great condition still. You can also go way cheaper by just searching up older models. You wouldn't even have to run Linux on the some of the less-old ones if you don't want to - a specced out business laptop from 2018 is totally capable of running Windows 11. Couldn't see myself buying a new laptop after doing this a couple times now.
You should give us a dollar amount for a budget.
Hands down the best laptop you can buy right now is the M1 Macbook air in my opinion. Best buy has it for $800 right now. Not exactly cheap but an investment in my opinion.
Refurbished thinkpad is going to be the more efficient use of your money. Make sure to get one with an SSD.
As for phones, the motorola g power is $150 new right now and has 3 day battery life. Motorola in general makes great budget phones.
If you want to do something tricky, google currently offers $246 for an iPhone 7 trade-in. So if you buy a working iPhone 7, you can get the Pixel 6a for $54.
You can get a working iphone 7 for like $70-$80 so it's a net profit of like $166.
The M1 is absolutely incredible, this chip is just amazing. I use one for work it's on another level, it literally cut my unit test time down to one TENTH of the original
opens up my jacket Whatchu buyin stran- Like 8 laptops fall to the floor and break
Here you go, the best bang-for-buck laptop you will find. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-ideapad-gaming-3-15-6-fhd-laptop-ryzen-5-5600h-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-3050-ti-256gb-ssd-shadow-black/6513216.p?skuId=6513216
Spend $40 to buy another 8gb ram, and put another ssd or 2.5" hdd in it to fix it's size problem and it's a great toy
lenovo makes some good and affordable laptops. Look into an ideapad
I went from a galaxy s7 to an a32 and while it's getting the job done, idk if I'd recommend it. Honestly my s7 was better. Might be better off just getting an older refurbished s series, if that's an option.
But I think the newer A-series phones like the A72 or A52 can keep up with some of the older S-series phones.
Fair enough, the a32 is kinda shit though. Do you use the default samsung keyboard? Do you find its autocorrect, kinda stupid? Like my s7's keyboard was great, but the a32 is horrible and makes so many bad autocorrects. If I fuck up the first letter of a word, there's like a 90% chance it's not gonna figure out a suitable replacement.
Install Linux Install Linux Install Linux Install Linux Install Linux Install Linux Install Linux Install Linux Install Linux Install Linux Install Linux
Ahem -- with that out of the way, I have a Lenovo T460s Thinkpad that I bought used (and no matter what you get, I think buying used is the way to get value for your money). It's a powerful, "modern" machine that's still flexible, capable, and easy to service. Various internet users complain about Lenovo for dumb hipster reasons (chiclet keys) and also for good reasons (oops they did a rootkit), but I still think they put out some of the best laptops on the market.
I love my little Huawei laptop, but I'm told the free markets have somehow failed to provide that option in Burgerland, so...
:vivian-shrug:
M1 Macbook Air recommendation is probably the best answer. You won't get a better cross-section of "pretty good" tier features at this price. Pretty good performance, screen, speakers, battery life, keyboard, trackpad, build quality. The newer M2 air you're getting like 10% performance bump, getting slower SSD speed, and sure... getting the everything old is new again magsafe charger port, but I don't think its worth an extra $250.
If you want to stay in the Windows world I've heard good things about the Framework Laptop but it might be getting too high up in cost...
To this day I'm mad that I don't have magsafe on my m1 macbook air. It's such a great feature and now I have to bumble around like a buffoon every time I wanna plug in the charger.
Otherwise I agree. It's a fanless laptop, and it's really fast and well-supported and doesn't consume much power on its own. Great efficiency. I'd prefer to run Linux but the hardware is just so good that I can't complain too much.
Also worth stating this is not a gaming computer, really. OP is coming from a chromebook so I don't imagine that's a real issue, but it's worth mentioning. I can run PCSX2 on this pretty nicely, at least.
psst. You can run Linux on a MacBook.
Edit: nevermind, you said M1, I'm being dumb. Though I thought that maybe Linus was daily driving an M1 MacBook.
I am eagerly awaiting better than beta-quality fruition of the Asahi Linux project.
I can run PCSX2 on this pretty nicely, at least.
wait you can run PCSX2 on the M1 Macbook Air? I tried it myself and it ran like ass
I played MGS2 on it. Mostly great! Don't get the stable 1.6.0 release, it's immensely out of date on such a fast-moving development. Get the v1.7 nightly build with Qt (for a better UI). And use the Metal graphics renderer.
I'll try using the nightlys, my sister is dying to play the urbz and she'll be mondo pleased if I get it to run.
If you want to get a used phone, I've had good luck on Swappa buying used phones. I personally like Androids. Fairphone aims to be an ethical phone that's user-repairable (but not available directly in the US). /e/ (Android-based phone OS) sells phones also. Wish I could afford a libreboot (BIOS) Linux laptop like these: https://minifree.org/
I have the M1 macbook air and it is very nice if you can afford it, battery life is bar none, it's lightweight, it's surprisingly performant for an ARM chip and you can do significant work with it. However it's a fucking scam that the base model comes with 8gb RAM when the OS consumes like 5gb by itself though and it pisses me off each time I think about it. And it can't game obviously, but it can do steam link and minecraft since I believe the latest version now executes natively on ARM.
wait M1 is just ARM? i literally thought it was a new architecture for some reason.
Apple has licensed ARM but over the past decade they've been making their own changes to it.
yep, just ARM. granted these are Apple's inhouse chips, they ain't sourcing anymore, but the architecture is ARM.
