hi! i currently don't have a laptop/computer. I have my phone and a Chromebook. I bought the Chromebook for super cheap several years ago, but 1.) I kinda miss being able to play games 2.) It's a Chromebook :u
I am not looking for something high end by any means. I am not in school anymore and I don't have a job/hobbies that requires me to have a computer. Just want something I could play some early/mid 2000s games on (probably the most "modern" thing I want to play is Sims 3). I don't actually have the money for this right now lol, but I am willing to save up to $300-ish? A little over that is fine bc I can always hold out until a holiday sale. Even if you can just suggest brands to look at/brands to avoid that would be cool. my last laptop I owned was a dell Inspiron (like in 2017 I think?). it worked nice for what I needed to do. However, I had a lot of issues with the charging port, even after having it repaired (which i believe is a common issue with Dell?)
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in reply to @squidcrusher's post:
When I was leaving for college a decade plus ago, my then-in-tech-support sibling said "don't buy a laptop less than $700" (or something like that, I don't remember the exact number); his reasoning wasn't about compute specs, but rather the case and other components being of sturdy quality. Now that I've had to order a small number of laptops as a sysadmin, I would reframe it as "try to find the models marketed to business use, not home" (lpt: if the OS is windows pro, it's for business)
In general, build quality is down across the whole gamut compared to a decade ago as far as I've read (which: is a decent bit, entirely in the context of business use with a small public library's budget), but: Dell's quality has been slowly getting iffier, and while I would still say is a decent choice, people are complaining about them more and more it seems. The Latitude line is the best choice, while Vostro is their budget-for-business line. I'm happy with our Latitudes. Thinkpad used to be the most rugged laptops, but I've read since Lenovo bought them the quality has gone down. That's not to say they're not still good, but they're not the tanks they were; I think they're a good choice too (but I've not worked with them directly)
Specs-wise you shouldn't have to worry much if you're not interested in anything more than Sims 3, but I strongly recommend making sure it's got a SSD for a Windows machine, and if you can get more than 8GB of ram do so--I hear windows 11 is ram hungry and chromium browsers definitely are too.
Thank you! Gives me something to think about. I see laptop prices are less than I feel like they were when I was still in school. (Heard it being related to demand going down with kids going back to in person learning) I generally don't mind paying for quality, but I have a hard time justifying a big price ticket since I probably wouldn't use it to "its full extent", but I will see what I can find for business laptops
Prices (and availability!) are definitely looking pretty good right now, yeah. Writing my comment I did see one thinkpad for $389 or something, but Dell starts at like $600 usually. Definitely shop around once you have the cash--Dell will randomly have rather great deals just to shift their warehouse space or something, and of course there's always holiday deals!
You may also want to look at refurbished, especially if the warranty window is a good length of time; the amount of savings is probably worth the dice roll on screen hinge/other component wear and tear
I have na Acer Aspire 5, I got it for $15 at goodwill so idk what it's retail price is but it's been serving me super well and can handle stuff like Minecraft no problem