I haven’t owned a functioning laptop in like, ten years because my phone does most of what I like, but I (probably) have tendinitis and carpal tunnel and need something more ergonomic for my terminally online needs. Arguing with strangers on the internet is not as effective on a cell phone lol.
I’m mostly streaming media, researching online and screwing around on lemmy. I’m interested in toying around with linux just to try it as an OS but would probably want to keep windows because Im not super tech savvy as people here seem to be. That said I can figure things out pretty quickly if I put my mind to it. I would like the ability to game if I wanted, but that might mean a whole different beast so if I could even run at least SNES roms or something like that that would be cool. I’d also like a decent sized screen, 16 inches at least. Hoping not to spend more than 1k if possible but I’m old and don’t know what the average price is really for something that’s upper-middle quality so whatever clever.
Thanks for any recommendations!
If you’re in the US, check out EPC’s Online Store. They’re an electronics recycler and they sell a ton of used electronics.
I’ve purchased three Lenovo micro PCs (now running my homelab Proxmox cluster) and a micro tower that is a dedicated Plex transcoder.
They have a ton of decent, 3 year old systems that would meet your needs:
- they’re cheap
- most all come with windows
- Linux can more than likely be easily dual booted.
They even have some super beefy Xenon laptops.
Edit: this MSI laptop pretty much perfectly fits your reqs.
Damn never thought I would see a place I used to work in the wild. Most of their computers will be decent quality stuff that a company was getting rid of.
But holy shit does it suck to work for them. Super low wages compared to other similar positions in the area and hostile work environments perpetuated by Fox News watching managers and owners.
I was blown away visiting the showroom in St. Charles, MO - but I could easily see it being a rough place to work. It sucks though - I like how they’re giving new life to systems that would otherwise be headed to a landfill.
I feel like it might be more of the area. St. Charles is the company HQ but a lot of the management and employers comes from the Wright City facility. I was based in STC but would have to go to the WC branch a few times a month and being a born and raised STL city boy, Wright City gave me Deliverance vibes.
Personally I hate St Charles in general, but the Wright City people are in their own little Tucker Carlson world and somehow made STC seem sane. Glad I’m at a job now where I can see the arch and actually have some diversity in my office.
Yeah… I’m lucky enough to be full time work from home, do I don’t need to deal with any of the O’Fallon office crazies.
Ohhh I never thought about a recycled laptop, that’s a really great idea. I had a laptop that lasted me 8-9 years so 3 isn’t a problem lol. Does double booting have to do with how much memory a computer has to be able to store both OS’?
Dual booting is more about hard drive space. This is a fairly good write up on one way to do it - basically you get a Windows laptop, and then shrink the partition (say instead of 100% of the 512gb storage, you make Windows take up 50%) and install Linux along side the Windows operating system.
Every time you start the laptop, you’ll then have the option to boot into Windows or Linux.
Second hand professional laptop like ThinkPad.
For software, something that plays nice with Linux.
For hardware, the M2 Air is a divine machine.
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I would advise against a laptop if ergonomics are a factor, they are slightly better than smartphones but still overall bad. Get some basic PC setup (if you don’t want to build your own, I suggest an ASUS mini PC or mac mini) and spend the rest on getting a decent chair, a desk where the monitor and keyboard/mouse are at levels that are comfortable for you.
i agree with opting for a desktop pc over a laptop here in this case.
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the phone’s worked for them for a decade, so i don’t think portability is needed.
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with being chained to a desk and chair for health reasons when using the pc, there’s no point to a laptop other than for portability (which isn’t needed)
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it will be easier to configure the work space, and offer more flexibility on display size and quality.
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a traditional desktop is easier to work on if something goes wrong or hardware upgrade is wanted down the road.
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For carpal tunnel you want a split keyboard. I’ve used the kinesis freestyle 2 for many years and swear by it.
I’m hoping that as a good compromise, I can get a monitor and a keyboard to hook up to it for working at home, that would work out I assume?
That’ll be fine. Just make sure you get a separate mouse no matter what your setup is to begin with. also you can get a laptop stand instead of a separate monitor, which will be cheaper while still improving ergonomics, though you will need to also get a keyboard
A second hand laptop like T430S
The framework 16 https://frame.work/products/laptop16-amd-7040
i would recommend the 13 but not 16, it literally hasn’t been released yet and there’s no reviews to base opinions off of.
I think it sounds great too, but it’s sold out for ages! And we don’t have any reviews yet, so the smaller one is probably better to go with for now.
ThinkPad T430
pros:
- old
- extremely cheap
- usable performance, can be upgraded to average performance
- libreboot compatible
- very compatible with Linux
- great keyboard (if you mod it with a t420 keyboard)
- trackpoint (controversial)
- hot swappable batteries
- repairable
- display can be upgraded to IPS if you manage to find a converter board
cons:
- old
- bad battery life (if you keep the stock one)
- TN panel
- not blazing fast (more than enough for the tasks you mentioned though)
Older model Framework (if I had a grand to drop)
The newer ones are sold out for ages sadly. (Good for them, but I wanted to recommend it to someone)
Those look pretty cool, I’ve never heard of them before. So it sounds like since components are so easily replaceable that you could kinda keep it as long as the company exists and just replace components as you go?
Yeah that’s about right, Linus from LTT is an investor and has multiple videos on it, if it was me I would buy the cheapest model and upgrade from there.
Here is a fantastic Google doc chart of good laptops and everything you would want to know about them that have an apu that is good for gaming without needing a dedicated gpu.
I would recommend the Acer Swift Edge 16, as it does pop up for $1,000 on sales, acer generally makes good laptops and don’t have scummy things secretly baked in like Lenovo, has amd RDNA 3 apu for running stuff, and for future gaming while running Linux my gut says AMD apu will be better than Intel because Steam Deck and most certainly the future steam deck 2 use Linux with amd apu, so I think driver optimization under Linux or used alongside Wine will favor AMD.
Thank you for this!
Maybe look into a used Thinkpad P series? They run Linux well, are typically more affordable than a new laptop which will definitely be 1K upwards, and have a 16 inch screen
Easy to repair and upgrade as well. Big fan of my Thinkpad T440P
Try a lenovo yoga ? Its small ,sleek and has touch screen , can be carried around easily !
But wont fit the 16 in display !
