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 don’t know if other distros have that too, but Ubuntu and Mint (being Ubuntu-based) have a nice graphical driver manager. Really simplified things when I used Nvidia GPU and Realtek WiFi card. Just click to install, restart, there you 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.
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 would get a (refurbished) MacBook. It’s simple to use, stable, and simply fun to work with, and little risk of attacks and visruses and security issues.
Seriously, get like… a 2020 MacBook. ~$300
My daily driver I use in the field is from 2012. They last forever.
Edit: avoid 2015-2019, their keyboards were shit
A cheap used one you lead Linux onto.
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!
Cheapest tablet you can find that has the screen size you want.
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.
Any kind of arm based laptop. Maybe a Chromebook.
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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.I’m not sure in what world you think a desktop system is easier to use than “just push the button”.
First I’ll address “less addicting”:
Short form media (e.g. YouTube shorts and TikTok) combined with notifications from everything that is fighting for your attention at all times. Mobile apps are specifically made to be addicting, whether it is just another 30 second vertical video, game with daily sign-in bonus or Amazon app telling you that you’re ugly (“You haven’t purchased any beauty products yet”)Ease of use, typically you have Windows pre-installed. Not my choice of OS, but nevertheless a “just works” experience.
Phone is going to do plenty of tracking.
Phone is going to need an account (to use Play Store).
And when speaking of web browsing, you get a physical keyboard to type comments/posts. If you want to watch movies, you get a larger screen, ditto if you just want to read articles.
When you open a website, you get the website, not some limited interface prompting you to install 200th app that just ends up being a web UI anyway.
When you open up multiple things, you can nicely have multiple tabs and windows. And they won’t get closed just because you opened the calculator or locked the screen and now the browser got optimized to save battery (hopefully you copied whatever you were typing to clipboard).More clumsy to use than a mouse/keyboard setup, smaller screen, fewer options when it comes to adblocking/privacy (or options in general).
