The sale for that model seems to be over. If I see something else pop up I’ll share a link.
Given that you mention that you don’t necessarily need a laptop…you might take a look at the Beelink mini PCs on Amazon (but ignore the mentions of “gaming” in some of the Amazon listings).
There are arguably too many of them listed, due to the variety of CPU, memory, and SSD options available, but I have a couple of them running in my home (one for household automation, and another for hobbyist purposes) without issue, despite my initial skepticism.
Doing research on my next PC gaming rig. I want something that can handle goodly intense graphics but doesn’t have to be top of the line as I’m not a hardcore raider. I wouldn’t mind another gaming laptop, but Jaspess wonders if that much expense is worth it for something I don’t use quite as much as I used to.
Leaning toward the ASUS ROG XBox Ally X for the flexibility of handheld or docked, but they’re sold out until January, and I’m not paying the greed premium to get one on eBay since I’m not in a hurry to have it.
Started researching gaming-oriented mini PCs as well. Would like something at a similar price point to the aforementioned ASUS (about $1000 or so), but willing to consider something more if I need to.
I am such a cheap sob when it comes to hardware. my desktops are like I dunno how old, they don’t have graphics cards. my laptops are like 10 years old and I bought them refurbed.
our server in the basement should have a gpu installed because we are doing some ai stuff on it, but I haven’t quite got to the point of pulling the trigger on a 1000 dollar gpu. and the AI is running slowly on current hardware so… eh.
Bump, looking for a laptop to replace the cannot-be-updated Win 10 PC.
Looking at Dell and Best Buy.
On this PC, I mainly do internet, e-mail, online poker, non-deep Excel for a non-profit.
Doesn’t sound like you need a lot of power. Dell tends to run pretty good deals on select configurations, but they also sell out quickly when they pop up. Costco laptops will generally have a slight upgrade over an otherwise identical model from Best Buy - better screen or more disk space…at the same price point. You’ll generally be getting a good deal if you get one from there that has one of their instant rebates running. Best Buy deal of the day will pop up a bargain, but they are usually on pretty low end models.
Figure out what size screen you want, pay for a few more pixels, and stay away from the low end/entry level laptop lines.
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Thank you!
Try asking AI why your PC can’t be updated. It turns out that mine can if I tweak a few settings.
ETA: I see in another thread your machine is a good bit older than mine, which is a COVID-era build.
Does it have to be a laptop?
I’ve become a fan of using the little Beelink mini-PCs available on Amazon for projects and household automation stuff.
At this time, I don’t need any more automation for my house.
Yeah, I’ve looked and I’ve tried.
I mention my use for them because they’re cheap and capable enough that I’ve bought a few of them / I keep a spare on hand.
They’re a perfectly reasonable/viable choice for general-purpose computer needs if you don’t need the mobility of a laptop. I wouldn’t, however, want to use them for “serious gaming” or my work-flavored abuse of Microsoft Excel.
I’m late in posting, but when this happened to all the computers in my house and I was unable/unwilling to replace them all, I moved them all to Linux. It’s been a big adjustment, but I quite like it. I also acknowledge it isn’t for everyone. Honestly the biggest hurdle for your use cases (beyond initial set-up, which really isn’t bad depending on the distribution) would be no good way to run Excel—you’d need to move to Google Sheets or some open source application like LibreOffice or OpenOffice.
I make no such admission.
My 83yo mother is on linux. Tech support calls? 0. She runs it without issue.
The office suite, Libreoffice works better than fine for 99% of people - I’ve never had to use word or excel in 20 years. If you’re a power user - and sure, in this industry that could be some folks - if libreoffice doesn’t work then set up a windows virtual box and just jump into excel on windows. I have a couple windows programs I use, that’s all I do.
Thank you for the advice.
I’m far more comfortable with Excel for my personal use. I’ve noticed that Google Sheets is just different enough to bother me.
Depending on what you’re trying to do, remember that Microsoft has cloud/web versions of Office applications accessible by any browser.
Also, Google tells me that folks have been able to run Excel on Linux under Wine, although the process described to make that happen is not for the faint at heart (…and I wouldn’t be surprised if performance were sufficiently degraded as to annoy Excel-addicted actuaries).
Maybe a bit off topic, but personally I love Microsoft Word/Excel (use it a lot at work, not for personal use anymore…), I love Google Docs/Sheets, and I just can’t stand LibreOffice Writer/Calc. I’ll continue to try to let them grow on me, I probably just need to tweak some settings for it to be palatable, but it’s just too different and the defaults just seem too nonsensical. It’s the single biggest thing I miss from Windows.
Edit: And I’m not interested in using the watered down online versions of Office—if I’m using something browser based anyway, I’ll use Google’s suite
Disagree that it’s off-topic. Part of choosing a PC is usability for the particular user.
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Wine sucks.