I don’t know much about computers yet, and I’d like to get advice from people who do have knowledge about them.
Cheap
Buy a used one, ideally refurbished. Those can be incredibly cheap. Feel free to slap any basic out of the box os on there, free os’s like Mint or Zorin are very beginner friendly, and you should be good to go.
I recently bought my sister a used Thinkpad X280 for 90€ on ebay. Was in perfect condition, has multiple USBC ports with display support and is super compact and light at ~1.2kg
The biggest issue to avoid is ones where the previous owner put too much pressure on the top while folded, which can leave the display with dents from the keyboard being pressed into it.
Something you can buy for 20 €.
Okay, I paid 60 € for mine and it’s good enough to play Skyrim and Stellaris :)But the same shop sometimes sells laptops for 30 €. They come preinstalled with Ubuntu Linux and are absolutely fine for browsing the web.
60€, that’s impressive! Which model?
Thinkpad X280.
And if you tell where the hell my key for the cellar is, I can go downstairs and check what model the Thinkpad I bought in 2017 for 30 €. It’s now in my pile of broken laptops from which I should extract useful files some day :P
Very nice deal! The Thinkpads I get are usually around 300€-400€, guess I don’t spend enough time chasing them down 😄
I get my laptops from a city bureau.
They sell old laptops of Helsinki public servants. The hard drives are very thoroughly emptied and Ubuntu is installed. It’s a kind of a workshop for unemployed people, with the purpose of keeping them used to the concept of work. They get a tiny bit of extra money atop their unemployment benefit by working there.
This has all kinds of weird side effects, like how the actual buying process runs. Once you’ve decided what you want to buy, they print something akin to a receipt to you, and you need to walk some 100 metres or so to a wood workshop where they have a worker with a permission to handle money. You give them the receipt and money, and they give you back a other receipt to prove you have paid. And then you take that back to the shack made of corrugated metal that works as the computer shop, give the receipt to the guy there and carry your laptop home.
At one point they were selling old laptops of the.fire brigade. They were built so that you could very well use them as a hammer 🐳
Anyway, the shop is on the backyard of the Kyläsaari recycling centre in Helsinki. It closes at 15, so.it’s a little bit difficult to visit if you’ve got an eight to four job.
Interesting!
A cheap used one you lead Linux onto.
Used thinkpad. You can get a nice laptop 140 to 220 in Europe on eBay and cheaper in US, depending on the specks or how old it is.
Generally speaking anything like the x280 / t480 / L580 or newer should be fast enough for most web browsing, including online meetings.
I seriously recommend spending extra on something with an IPS screen, or else your eyes are in for a bad time.
Also, try to get something with 16GB of ram, 8GB is enough for casual web browsing, but 16GB allows you to open many tabs comfortably and is run many applications at once.
I think that’s the entire purpose of the Chromebook, right? Those are usually dirt cheap.
That said a Macbook air will be more money but also more computer and have a longer effective life span. I like how seriously Apple takes privacy.
FYI, Apple is not great for privacy. They’ve done a good job at fooling people into thinking they are, but they’re using the same twisted definition of “privacy” that every other big tech company uses. Privacy to Apple means that Apple can see all your data and track everything you do, but no one else can.
https://proton.me/blog/iphone-privacy
I use Apple devices and they’re generally well-built and last a long time. But they are not private.
a cell phone. if it was a teen who actually needed to learn an operating system to be able to be employed later in life, ok get them a gaming laptop, but for a random old person who doesn’t care mobile is way more simple to use and less addicting.
mobile is way more simple to use and less addicting.
Is this sarcasm or not?
I am actually asking.
