Hi -
I use Ubuntu Linux on a desktop computer at home and would like to set up a laptop with it. One of the big attractions of Linux for me has been the low price and flexibility. So, I'd like a laptop with those qualities. I'm thinking of spending $200 to $350. The two options I've thought about are getting a chromebook and using ChrUbuntu or Crouton or getting a used laptop and installing Ubuntu.
I'd like to be able to run GIMP and a linux video editor like kdenlive or pitivi. I know that what I get may not have a lot of power for video editing, so that's not my highest priority. I'd like a reasonable amount of hard drive storage (200gb+), 4gb of ram, and a USB 3 port so I could attach a fast USB external drive.
With a chromebook, I know there aren't many with USB 3 ports and I'd have to see if I could upgrade the SSD drive they come with, since they don't have much capacity.
On the other hand, with a used laptop, I get the idea I should probably try to find something less than 3 years old in order to have a few years of longevity. I think I could probably find good processing power, ram and external ports with a used laptop, though.
Has anyone out there done something like this, or does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks.

New machines hit the market. Windows Weenies that want the latest and greatest buy the new machines. What to do with the old one? Put in on E-Bay.

That's one way (you can easily get rid of Windows when you install Linux).

Another way, Staples has sales (a lot of sales).

Still another way, Dell and Hewlett-Packard have a lot of sales at their web sites.

Hope this helps some.

1 members found this post helpful.

Chromebooks can get pricey as well though. I personally have not had experience with them.

However, I have had experience with Dell Vostro and the recent incarnations of Lenovo, and I can advise you to stay away from both for reasons of hardware quality. It has went down the tubes as they say.

I run Arch on an older single core proc laptop and it works fantastic. If you have the time and patience to go through an Arch install and build it the way you want, you will reap the benefits of it, in performance, boot times, and looks

I suggest hitting the ebays and looking for a refurb, or perhaps used laptop in your price range. Make sure the seller is good, and has a return warranty in case it ships doa or has a problem within the first month. Its likely that it won't have a warranty, but I have been lucky myself on all my laptop/netbook purchases there and havent needed a warranty.

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I would choose my '08 Latitude over any low priced current gen notebook. Look for used

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You have 5 hours

Link

I agree with you Germany_chris -- Those old dell latitudes are workhorses. Until my recent job, I still had a 630 that was raging on in the server room as a constantly on monitoring solution.

1 members found this post helpful.

Been looking for one of those, but doesn't ship to APO

Nice find if not yours, nice puter if it is

Not mine. I bought me a C710 Acer Chromebook instead. I have my old IBM A22M up for sale on the local fm radio station here and I am just waiting to recoup 50 bucks on this chromebook purchase.

It has no usb 3.0 and the internal drive is 16gig SSD but the price was right with 4 gig of ram and a web cam for 119 bucks with everything and battery is new. So no complaints as I research running probably MX-14 or AntiX off of a class 10 SD card on this rig. ChromeOS is OK in a lukewarm kinda way. Sure is a different way of thinking and I hate
not being able to play my .pls stream radio files natively in chromeOS media player.

So unless you got some mad skillz or a patient tinkerer like me. I'd avoid a chromebook. I had the disposable monies so I pulled the trigger on this one.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the replies so far. I've seen a Dell Latitude E6410 online that looks good. I'll keep looking for laptop pc's that seem like they have what I want.

My last new laptop was $300 with the extended warranty. My current laptop was free. My sister in law was gonna chuck it into the trash. My next one might be a DIY with something like a hummingboard as the computing part. With linux what do you need? A display, some network connectivity, and a keyboard that doesn't piss you off?

A year ago my trusty T23 died. Went to eBay. Lenovo i5 T410 "refurbished", leased to some company for a year, cleaned and sold. For $200. Pulled the hard drive and sold it along with Vista Pro sticker on eBay for $60. Dropped in a 128 GiB SSD (happened to have a bunch of them in my drawer for free). Can't have a better Linux compatible laptop than IBM, err ... Lenovo ... err Quanta. In case you didn't know IBM never manufactured a laptop. I suspect Lenovo is doing the same, re-branding Quanta laptops.

My girlfriend has had such good luck with TigerDirect.com that it has become her go-to place for computer stuff.

You might consider a reconditioned Win7 laptop from there.

Can't stand tigerdirect.com. I bought from them once, many years ago. I still see their marketing spam in my mail server logs, rejected indeed. Never subscribed to any of their lists, unsubscribed every time I got a UCE from them, nothing stopped their spam but adding their domain to the blacklist.

I can highly recommend MicroCenter (http://microcenter.com) for great selection and reasonable pricing -- MicroCenter is Toys-R-Us for... uh, big boys. They don't have a brick-and-mortar in Florida (there are two in Georgia) and, if you ever get a chance to stop in one of their stores be sure and allow at least six hours for the visit.

Oh, yeah, if you get on their mailing list, the unsubscribe does work.

Hope this helps some.

I've never dealt with them directly myself. I was citing the experience of someone I respect as regards their products. I did meet their security vendors once. They had a pretty good opinion of them as a client.

As for email spam, unfortunately everyone does that these days. I have been happy with my Dells, but my spambox runneth over with stuff from Dell. You buy one new computer and they promptly try to sell you three more!