From the POV of a poor uni student that carries a laptop all the time and manages buying laptops for family.
(1) Do not buy anything with a glued-in screenMake sure it has a traditional laptop bezel around the screen. If it's a glass sheet glued on or anything else: stay away from it, it's probably
much harder to source and install replacements.
Telling your kids to "not break the screen" is not a reliable method of preventing screen damage. It's a school with many (hundreds?) of other students, stairs and sheep-throwing teachers. There's a good 50% change it will get destroyed at some point.
As a point of comparison: replacement for my current laptop's screen is about 65AUD shipped from eBay. I've done this a few times for myself and others, it's easy and cheap (only screwdrivers are required).
(2) Do not buy anything without a SATA portMany low-end laptops these days use soldered-on MMC flash of around 16GB-64GB; instead of a HDD or SSD. They often call this an 'SSD', but it's highly dissimilar to traditional SSDs in many ways.
Ignoring the fact the flash is slower than an SSD: the main issue is lifespan. My last laptop became useless because this MMC started acting up after three years of wear. It's soldered on BGA, so there's little hope of replacing it easily. And these laptops tend to skip on having an internal SATA port, so you're SOL if anything happens to the MMC.
With a traditional SATA port inside a laptop you can just switch out the drive if anything bad ever happens. I've also found SSDs to be more reliable than soldered-on MMC anyway (likely due the size/availability of spare blocks).
(3) "New condition" laptops can be had from company clearouts on eBayI picked up two new-condition 11.6" thinkpads off eBay for 200 AUD each + shipping this year, family is very happy with them. My timing seemed to match IT companies doing stock changes, so there were many available, and YMMV. The laptops were only 2 years old and in perfect/unused condition.
My current laptop is a refurbished model bought through DELL (they sell refurbs directly, see their website). It's had some battery problems, but after battling for a warranty replacement I received a battery with the exact same problems. So I suspect it's a model fault
(4) Modern "features" are often not worth it (Unless you have very, very specific needs. Certain device compat, disability support, etc )
In particular:
- Touchscreens
- USB C ports
(5) 11.6" units (the smallest common size) are very portable optionsThese laptops are about the size of a thick A4 book. They fit in bags very well, are lightweight (generally 1~1.6kg) and are slightly bigger than most 'netbooks' of about a decade ago.
Screen: 1366x768 at 11.6" is perfectly workable for most people. Sometimes it's a little frustrating (especially since most applications want touchscreen-size UI these days) but it's still a very popular and supported size. Don't go for 1920x1080 in this size, it makes most applications + text way too small, and workarounds are fiddly.
If your kid has very bad vision it may be wise to go for something bigger at a low resolution (more inches, but sticking to 1366x768).
(6) Stick to standard x86 machinesPlease, please don't buy a macbook. They're not worth the money. They are not "well built", that age of apple has well passed. They're just as crap as everything else now, but cost more to repair.
Avoid chromebooks unless you plan to replace the OS on them (and have researched how to do this). The options for software you want to install are heavily limited, not to mention the privacy problems (which may or may not be a concern for you, opinions vary).
(7) Don't spend an arm and a leg"Ooh, those laptops over there cost 1800! Why is the one I've looking at so cheap? There must be something wrong with this $400 one then!"
Nope. The $400 one is fine. They don't cost anywhere near that to make. You're being manipulated by, literally, price labels.
When a friend lends me their laptop and tells me how much it costs I have to realise that I could have bought
four of my current laptop for what they paid, and still have money left over for dozens of packets of Tim-Tams. And I could be grinning my (chocolate-covered) face off whilst doing so.
While I'm ranting here: there was once a poll for how much people pay for laptops on a linux subreddit. The minimum option was "$1000 or below". Yeah, thanks. Let's move on.
(8 ) Tips on researching modelsMany laptops on the market advertise their crazy specs. And magically no info on their battery life. That means they have no battery life. Don't be suckered into buying a desktop replacement, classrooms only have a few tether points for power and there will be a pile of kids queued to use them.
It's worth getting something smaller/lighter if only because your kid is unlikely to be using it all the time in class. Paper still rules in many areas, and probably always will. I went through the NSW year-9 free laptop program: the result were laptops that were great for games and movies, but poor for work (because they were so locked down). Things are different when you control the laptop, but don't believe teachers/staff if they claim "most" work will be done on a laptop; they're trying to tow the party line but won't change their teaching style any more than they normally would. Teaching is about the people, not the devices.
To find the age of a laptop (a surprisingly hard task): research its processor. Intel's ARK site has manufacture dates for their parts, Wikipedia pages have dates for AMD parts. Whilst in the desktop space any processor from 2011 onwards is still OK for daily use; the laptop world is a little different. Even though processors have not been getting much faster they have been getting more power efficient, and batteries also die over time. Don't buy anything that's more than 3 years old unless you know exactly what you're doing.
(9) Throw Linux on as a dual-boot option For when Windows breaks the night before an assignment is due, if for nothing else. You and your kid may or may not want to be using it over Windows, that's fine, but Windows is quickly becoming a shitshow and you want options in your belt.
(Actually I lie: Linux can't save you from the
latest Microsoft stuff-ups. Make sure your kid backs up their stuff!)
If you and your kid are happy with Linux as the main OS, but you fear the school may have some problems: put Windows into a Virtualbox VM and leave an icon for it on the desktop. Vbox is free, its wizard sets you up quickly and easily. You will want to install the "Guest extensions" in Windows afterwards to get a good feel and performance for everyday use. You can share a folder between the two OS's so things are easy. When it's needed Windows will be there, just a click away.
Sidenote: I recommend Linux Mint (Cinnamon or XFCE) for new users. Don't go for anything that uses GNOME 3.
(10) Get a laptop padding thingamajigThey're less than 10AUD shipped from eBay and you have hundreds of printed designs to choose from. They're nothing more than some padding and a zipper, but they save a lot of money and trouble in the long-term if you carry a laptop in your backpack.
eBay search term: "11.6 laptop bag" (or appropriate size), then sort by cheapest.
I lost my first laptop screen to a plastic chinese takeaway container in my bag. Yep. Anything with a corner will put pressure on the screen. Since I started using a cheap padded bag I have lost no screens in my backpack.
Hope some of this helps.
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
