Cheap laptops with 2gb ram/32gb SSD

[kenzz]

I happily used a netbook for many years when travelling; XP just about fitted on a 4gb SSD and that was OK for me. Now it seems I can't trust XP and I haven't found a version of linux that works well with a VPN.

Therefore I'm tempted by the cheap 2gb/32gb laptops. For my uses, I definitely need windows; a celeron cpu and 11.6'' screen are definitely OK; 2gb ram is definitely OK; and most software I use are portableapps on an SD card. But I am unsure how well win 8.1 with bing and/or win 10 fits on a 32gb ssd. Even though there must be millions of cheap laptops in use, it seems there is no comprehensive or definitive information based on actual use on whether win 10 is viable on 32gb.

Also it seems strange that, with 2gb ram, the windows installed is 64 bit when it appears 32 bit would use 4gb less of the SSD and performance would probably not be noticeably less than 64 bit.

 

[JWade]

check out delloutlet. you can get some really good deals there when they have a sale going on with coupon codes, as of right now no current codes though. I picked up a 11" laptop for my wife for just over $200 with the Pentium processor in it, regular hard drive but had a spare ssd to throw in it.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Microsoft has worked to reduce the footprint of Win 10 on small SSDs but check the reviews of some recent devices to see how much free space there is.

I'd expect it to be fine unless you wanted to install more than 1 or 2 semi-modern games and Office. Visual Studio might run out of space unless you do a custom minimal install.

 

[kenzz]

Microsoft has worked to reduce the footprint of Win 10 on small SSDs but check the reviews of some recent devices to see how much free space there is.

I'd expect it to be fine unless you wanted to install more than 1 or 2 semi-modern games and Office. Visual Studio might run out of space unless you do a custom minimal install.

I'm far from being an expert but, from my experience, I suggest it is not as simple as that. For example, I've yet to find a review which gives details of the installed size of the OS after all current updates etc and with the laptop having reasonably usable software.

I've put together a few notes of my own to help me understand Windows on a 32GB SSD.

1. MS define a GB as 1,073,741,824 bytes; SSD manufacturers define a GB as 1,000,000,000. As a result a ''32GB'' SSD only shows as about 29.8GB in Windows terms. Therefore an immediate ''loss'' of 2.2GB of space.

2. There is a thread on this forum http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2419697 about the HP Mini Desktop which has Win8.1 with Bing using WIMBoot on a 32GB SSD. My experience withe the Mini 32GB (copied from the thread but slightly altered) ... disk management shows the C drive is 21.70GB and the recovery partition is 7.63GB; which adds up to 29.33GB therefore there's already about 2.60GB missing from the advertised 32GB. For the C drive, the factory install of Win 8.1 and deleting some bloatware resulted in 6.9GB used and 14.8GB free. Installing only the ''important'' win 8.1 updates resulted in 14.1GB used and 7.6GB free. Adding an anti-virus, win 8.1 ''recommended'' updates and minimum install of Office 2007 with all updates resulted in about 21GB used and 0.7GB free.

3. From item 2, HP's implementation of Win8.1 with WIMBoot seems to me to be a disastrous method of trying to reduce the installed size of Win8.1 to fit on a 32GB SSD. WIMBoot uses the recovery partition which cannot be deleted therefore Win8.1 with only the important updates actually used the 14.1GB shown plus the 7.6GB recovery partition i.e. 21.7GB just for Win8.1. On another PC I have, a clean install of standard Win8.1 with important updates uses about 14.5GB.

4. Current cheap 2GB/32GB laptops presumably have Win8.1 with WIMBoot. However as here http://www.anandtech.com/show/9676/windows-10-feature-focus-compactos it appears that Win10 has a different compression methodology which may improve the use of Windows on a 32GB SSD. Which is why I'm querying whether anyone has any information on the actual everyday use of these sort of cheap laptops. (It seems that most users of the HP Mini upgraded the 32GB SSD to128GB which is not possible on the cheap laptops)

5. It appears that 32bit Win10 requires 4GB less space to install than 64bit Win10. Cheap laptop manufacturers all seem to install 64bit versions of Win. My understanding is that the major advantage of 64bit is enabling use of greater than 4GB of ram. With only 2GB of ram on cheap laptops it's strange to me that manufacturers do not supply 32bit which would increase the viability of Win on a 32GB SSD with restricted space.

Quite probably I'm wrong on a lot of this stuff but I'm really just thinking out loud for my own benefit. I'll probably buy one of these cheap 2GB/32GB laptops and don't want to be too optimistic in my expectations.

 

[TwoBills]

I have a Dell 8.1 with Bing OS, 32GB ssd, 8GB ram (upgraded from the original 2GB) and a Centrino chip . With hibernation and page file turned off I have 10-13GB of free space (on a good day). Nothing fancy, but does the job. Plenty of storage w/sd cards and thumbs. I see they'll be on sale on Black Friday for $149.
The problem I'm working on now is trying to clone this ssd to a samsung evo 120.

 

[arcenite]

I have a Dell 8.1 with Bing OS, 32GB ssd, 8GB ram (upgraded from the original 2GB) and a Centrino chip . With hibernation and page file turned off I have 10-13GB of free space (on a good day). Nothing fancy, but does the job. Plenty of storage w/sd cards and thumbs. I see they'll be on sale on Black Friday for $149.
The problem I'm working on now is trying to clone this ssd to a samsung evo 120.

Check out Macrium Reflect.

 

[sm625]

I have a "well worn" windows 7-32 installation and the size of the Windows folder is 16GB. This is after running windows update cleanup. It will be a lot more if 64 bit.

 

[ArisVer]

Since you are so worried about disk space, get a 60GB SSD.

 

[kenzz]

I have a Dell 8.1 with Bing OS, 32GB ssd, 8GB ram (upgraded from the original 2GB) and a Centrino chip . With hibernation and page file turned off I have 10-13GB of free space (on a good day). Nothing fancy, but does the job. Plenty of storage w/sd cards and thumbs. I see they'll be on sale on Black Friday for $149.
The problem I'm working on now is trying to clone this ssd to a samsung evo 120.

I assume you're going to replace the 32GB SSD with the new samsung. Probably no need to clone the existing SSD ... what works with an HP with Win8.1 with Bing on a 32GB SSD is to create a Win8.1 System Image Backup on a USB drive ... remove the old 32GB SSD and install the new SSD ... boot from the USB drive and re-install Win 8.1 with Bing on to the new SSD from the System Image Backup.

 

[kenzz]

Since you are so worried about disk space, get a 60GB SSD.

It appears not possible with any of the cheap 2GB/32GB laptops. I think all these laptops have the 32GB SSD soldered to the motherboard.

 

[kenzz]

On an impulse I bought one of these cheap 11.6" 2GB/32GB laptops.

My experience:-
1. Win8.1 with Bing; C:drive partition is 19.80GB; Recovery partition is 9.00GB. Uses WIMBoot therefore Recovery partition cannot be removed.
2. After setting up and activating Win8.1 ... C:drive 5.6GB used; 14.2GB free
3. After installing all important Win8.1 updates ... C:drive 12.9GB used; 6.9GB free (interesting that the updates download was only 1.6GB but it increased the space used on the C:drive from 5.6GB to 12.9GB!!!)
4. After removing as much bloatware as possible ... C:drive 11.8GB used; 8GB free.

Summarizing:-
The way Windows measures GB's, the advertised "32GB" SSD turns out to be 28.8GB. After removing bloatware, installing all important (i.e. not including recommended) Win8.1 updates then the SSD has only 8GB free space for installing and using other software. What amazes me is that the OS in effect uses a total of 20.8GB to operate i.e. 11.8GB on the C:drive plus the 9GB Recovery partition under the WIMBoot system. A clean install of an updated Win8.1 without WIMBoot probably only uses about 15GB. Therefore it appears the laptops would be much more usable if the manufacturers had installed normal Win8.1 rather than using the WIMBoot system.

However the situation is much improved after upgrading to Win10
1. Upgrade to Win 10, Recovery partition is deleted. C:drive 14.4GB used, 14.4GB free.
2. Install all updates to Win 10. C:drive 18.5GB used, 10.3GB free
3. Ran Disk Cleanup to remove temporary Windows installation files. C:drive 11.9GB used, 17GB free. I checked that the Win10 OS had been compressed by MS's new CompactOS system.

Therefore Win10 on the "32"GB SSD results in having a very usable 17GB free for installing and using a reasonable amount of other software. Future updates of Win10 will reduce this amount of free space but, although the cheap 2GB/32Gb laptops have obvious limitations, they are what they are and suit my particular purpose.

 

[XavierMace]

There's a few things I think you're misunderstanding.

A) The recovery partition isn't there just because they are using WIMBoot. Manufacturers place a recovery partition on the drive instead of providing you with installation media. For example my HP Pavilion X2 has a 128Gb SSD with a 9Gb recovery partition. That's using a standard Windows install. By doing a clean install and wiping out that partition, you've effectively erased your factory media.
B) The "loss" of space isn't specific to SSD's not is Microsoft's calculation specific to them. It's a difference of binary vs decimal.

 

[kenzz]

There's a few things I think you're misunderstanding.

A) The recovery partition isn't there just because they are using WIMBoot. Manufacturers place a recovery partition on the drive instead of providing you with installation media. For example my HP Pavilion X2 has a 128Gb SSD with a 9Gb recovery partition. That's using a standard Windows install. By doing a clean install and wiping out that partition, you've effectively erased your factory media.
B) The "loss" of space isn't specific to SSD's not is Microsoft's calculation specific to them. It's a difference of binary vs decimal.

Rather than misunderstanding, I was trying to keep the post short because I tend to get long-winded. However if anyone is interested I'll amplify further:-

A) I agree the recovery partition is there in lieu of the manufacturer's installation media. However, probably your're aware that if you create a System Image Backup under standard Win8.1 which does not use WIMBoot then the procedure allows you the option of deleting the recovery partition to free up space on an SSD i.e. the System Image Backup created under standard Win8.1 acts as installation media. Also, if you keep a record of the Win8.1 Product Key then you can download the official Win8.1 iso from MS and re-install the OS. Therefore there are 2 methods of re-installing standard Win8.1 even if the recovery partition is deleted. Regrettably neither of these options is available with Win8.1 with Bing which requires the recovery partition to remain on the SSD to allow the OS to boot.

B) I agree the "loss" of space is the difference between binary and decimal definitions of a GB. However manufacturers and suppliers of USB drives, HDD's, SSD's, data transmission speeds etc use the decimal definition to sell their products as, for example, "32GB". But MS Windows uses the binary definition resulting in Windows defining a manufacturer's "32GB" SSD as a 29.8GB SSD. Similar results apply to HDD's, USB drives etc and it appears many people think they have been cheated when they buy, say, a 32GB USB drive and find it only shows up as 29.8GB in Windows.