Please advise on laptop purchase

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amother

Bronze

Mon, Nov 05 2018, 3:20 pm

Can someone please guide me? I'm completely ignorant about computers!

I'm looking for an inexpensive laptop (under $500, and preferably under $300) to be used primarily for writing. I'm accustomed to using Word.

The hard drive on my old Toshiba just died on me (the nerve!)! However, it never worked perfectly. For example, the cursor would spontaneously jump to the middle of a previous paragraph while I was typing, which was incredibly annoying.

TIA. Amother because I've been discussing this ad nauseum IRL.

youngishbear

Mon, Nov 05 2018, 3:25 pm

Black Friday and cyber Monday are coming up, so it might be worth it to wait a bit for good deals. Word processing doesn't take too much power so you don't need a fancy device.

Was the cursor-jumping completely random, or could it have happened when your palm or wrist brushed over the touchpad? It happens to me sometimes. For future reference, the touchpad sensitivity level can be adjusted to prevent this.

amother

Bronze

Mon, Nov 05 2018, 4:06 pm

youngishbear wrote:

Thanks for responding.

I certainly don't need or want a fancy device. Any recommendations as to what brand/type would be appropriate? Where do I even begin to look?

I guess it's possible that I brushed against the touchpad. I'll keep that in mind when I finally have a new laptop.

doctorima

Mon, Nov 05 2018, 4:41 pm

As BF gets closer, I would check slickdeals.net a couple times a day. I would plan to spend more than $300. You should be able to get a much higher-quality laptop for around $450 from one of the major companies (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.). It should have at least 8 GB of RAM, and try to get a SSD (solid state drive) instead of an older standard hard drive, which will make it much quicker to start up.

amother

Bronze

Mon, Nov 05 2018, 4:44 pm

Are factory refurbished models worth considering?

amother

Bronze

Mon, Nov 05 2018, 4:45 pm

How long should I expect a laptop to last?

aliavi

Thu, Nov 15 2018, 12:58 pm

Could you use the Google cloud for storage and get a Chromebook? Depending on size those are really inexpensive. Depending on what type of writing, you could use a journaling site like Penzu maybe, so you wouldn’t be storing things on a hard drive?

seeker

Thu, Nov 15 2018, 3:52 pm

If you mostly just use word processing, you can definitely find a decent laptop around or even under $300 on/around Black Friday. It won't be a great one but word processing uses pretty much the least power of anything one needs from a computer so you really don't need anything great.

Factory refurbished with a good warranty can be a good deal.

Go with a recognized brand like Dell or HP. If it's cheap because it's from a brand nobody's heard of, then it's probably not a good deal.

wife2

Thu, Nov 15 2018, 5:55 pm

I will give you links to $400 HP and Dell for Black Friday. They are both solid companies and will work well for you.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/h.....40849

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/d.....39201

amother

Bronze

Wed, Nov 21 2018, 7:42 pm

Thanks so much everyone for responding. I'm looking at Chromebooks now. Any recommendations?

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