New laptop for kid - ideas?

[GfK]

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[Derron]

> 2. SSD (or drive-bay access that won't invalidate the warranty).

Is this a warranty void for you? Hard discs - and RAM are stuff placed in notebooks in a way that normal tech experienced persons are able to replace them. So at least in Germany (and surely other countries) replacing them does not void the warranty.


I have an old HP - some rubber parts went loose after the years, and also the chassis has a little crack in the corner (I wear it "bare" in my backpack so it might have hit some stuff here and there). Bought it "used" some years ago (~4yrs) for 200€. Fan got a bit loud/CPU hotter when upgraded to Windows 10 but else it is a steady workhorse with nice digitizer on board.

Also have some Acer, Toshiba, ... laptops here which still work but are too aged to use them for something "productive" than real-hardware-testing apps.


If you require some mainstream manufactorer then I would not blindly throw Lenovo out of the list of candidates - just check the "Floppy lid"-areas on the device of interest. Eg a "convertible" would be constructed differently and so the lid-part is more hardened.
All of the vendors might have issues with noisy AC plugs, hearable fans on high cpu load, ... or getting warm below a hands palm (some company introduced cooling of the WASD area ...)

bye
Ron

[Xerra]

I've got a Lenovo Windows laptop I bought 18 months or so back and it's the biggest pile of shit I've ever owned. Damn thing is so slow that it takes 15 mins to launch calculator. Sure, it was cheap, but it was sold as a solid computer. I never got round to taking the damn thing back though because I had parallels up and running by then and just left it for the missus to tinker with.

[Derron]

Had a Lenovo on my laps last weekend - it booted 15 minutes until I was able to use it.

Took me almost an hour until the uninstaller of some McAfee suite finished uninstalling it's security suite and AV suite - licence ended "388 days ago" - maybe this borked up something.
After uninstall the whole machine booted up in <1minute (no SSD I think - else it would be <10 seconds). Computer was fluent again so I uninstalled some Lenovo "tools", updated AMD gpu drivers, ... removed some "chromium" from autostart (added twice for whatever reason) and then ... computer was OK to get used.


Fan was quiet, computer not that hot and it did what it should - no hardcore users though.


bye
Ron

[Brucey]

I like my ThinkPad

[JBR]

Hi,

Have you considered a DELL INSPIRON. They can be quite cheap and fairly simple to change to SSD.

Jim

[CodingKnight]

Just saying, whatever you get, get a laptop with a good battery. I bought a Dell Inspirion and after a year of use it doesn't last more than 2 hours on battery.

[JBR]

To be fair the Inspiron is not really designed for battery life. You should go for a small screen and slower processor.

I went for a 17" i7 and it still lasts 2 hours after 2 years.

Good luck, Jim.