My old personal laptop is going on 12 years old. I rarely use the thing. Typically I have to jump start the battery when I need to use it. If you haven’t ever done this, you can use 2 paper clips and a drill battery or car battery. I normally only use it for doing taxes and photo storage. No gaming and not typically any high end graphics. I jumped it the other day but most software is no longer supported and it doesn’t have the minimum requirements for the tax software that I normally use.
I historically used my work laptop for most things as they allow personal use. They recently locked down the ability to install 3rd party software so I need to get a new personal laptop.
I am looking for recommendations. I was looking at a dell (https://deals.dell.com/en-us/productdetail/g9va) 15" 8GB ram and 512GB HD. I use to keep up on this stuff but there is limited time in the day. I am asking for opinions. I really don’t want to spend over $500 but $300 would be better. Like I said it will rarely be used. The kids are so far away from needing one for school that this one will probably be obsolete by they time they need one for school.
You will probably get as many different recommendations as replies. My wife and kids do not really need anything more than Email, Web, MS Office type of applications. I have been pretty happy with the ASUS Vivobook 15 that I bought for them. You can find a nice 16GB RAM and 1TB HD on sale for around $500 if you are patient and shop around. I have bought one from Amazon and one from Office Depot during various sales promotions…
If you are not brand loyal or needing any specific configuration or high end specs, my advice is to search Best Buy’s open box section.
We bought the last two laptops for our kids (prettty high end, with graphic software), and they were almost half off.
As far as we could tell, they were not “used”, just either floor model or return without actually using .
Costco also extends the manufacturers warranty to two years plus they have tech support which is nice.
Before my son headed off to college I bought him an Apple laptop from Costco, a couple months later I get $100 Costco gift card in the mail and a letter explaining they dropped the price and passed the savings on to me. Damn nice of them.
I am probably the last person here who should make a recommendation for what Laptop to get. I have a Chromebook. Been using them for years now, great if you need just simple stuff done.
One thing I have discovered about laptops is that there are so many different models within a brand that the specific model is more important than the brand. My husband bought an HP laptop before he died that is one of its better models but not the best and he liked it. When I bought my last laptop I decided to change to Apple so it would be compatible with my iPhone and iPad and love it
