My shop laptop seems to have died. All I need is a way to get to Youtube, web searches, and of course, GRM breaks. I started cruising for used laptops and then realized I might need to buy Windows to do this. Is a Chromebook really all I need? Is there anything to look out for if I go this path?
Why would you need to buy windows on a used laptop? My most recent was password locked and windows 10 had a helpful way to take it back to fresh from the factory built in.
But yea, a chrome book would work.
You can buy a refurbished Thinkpad for $189. I wouldn't waste money on marketplace looking for a used one.
I keep one in the shop and one in my day bag. They are pretty damn fast, built like a tank, have more storage than I'll ever use, and are covered by a 90-day warranty if something goes wrong.
In reply to RevRico :
I just went thru this -- got an e-cycled laptop from my job for $0. The BIOS has a Windows activation code (called a SLIC) in it. When I did a clean Win 10 install, when I accessed the web, it was automatically activated.
More details: Windows digital licensing
A Chromebook would work fine for that, could also put Linux on any old laptop.
Toyman! said:You can buy a refurbished Thinkpad for $189. I wouldn't waste money on marketplace looking for a used one.
I have the model before that a T440 p and it works fine , I bought it used 3-4 years ago
Another vote for a use Lenovo Thinkpad - we have a couple of T580s, an X1 Carbon and a T440 that I all bought used. Other than one T580 suffering from a fairly common issue with the HDD connector, they just work and come with Windows Licenses.
Plus you can stick Linux on pretty much all of them as a lot of OSS developers use Thinkpads, so they tend to be amongst the best support and at least up to the T480/T580, most repairable laptops available.
In my book, Chromebooks are ewaste-in-waiting in a way that regular, good laptops like the Thinkpads aren't because they're not really repairable. If you can still ChromeOS Flex on them, at least you get longer support now (IIRC up to 10 years), but I'm not sure that's the case for all of them.
You could do a Raspberry Pi is you have a TV or monitor to hook it up to.
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