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.

  • pastalicious [he/him, undecided]
    ·
    2 years ago

    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...

    • neo [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      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.

      • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        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.

        • neo [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I am eagerly awaiting better than beta-quality fruition of the Asahi Linux project.

      • mittens [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        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

        • neo [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          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.

          • mittens [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            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.

            • neo [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Good news: https://nitter.net/PCSX2/status/1598862643917336576