- Aug 25, 2001
- 56,578
- 10,215
- 126
First of all, no pics of Mom.
She's got an older Lenovo IdeaPad 100S. She watches videos and looks things up online, to pass the time. No, I don't think that she does forums, or types much.
The IdeaPad 100S, has a Bay Trail Atom quad-core, 1.3Ghz (1.8Ghz "burst"). It has a Passmark of around 900.
Walmart has a few laptops, currently, mostly IdeaPads, with CPUs ranging from a Celeron 4205U ($209), to a Pentium Gold 5405U ($259), to an i3-8145U ($289), to an i5-8265U ($369). All have Windows 10, the Celeron and Pentium have 4GB RAM, the i3 and i5 have 8GB RAM, and all have 128GB SSDs, and 1366x768 screens.
I, of course, want "the best" for my Mom, as well as, I want to be able to buy a laptop for her, that's future-proof enough, that she doesn't need to buy another one in 3-4 years. (Unless it wears out physically, or the battery dies/swells up.)
So, the trade-off. Do I "go cheap", with the cheapest option, around 1.5x-2.0x as fast as her current laptop. (Actually, faster, the IdeaPad 100S has 2GB of RAM, 32-bit Windows 10, and only a 32GB eMMC.)
Or do I go for "the gusto" for the $389 one, with a Passmark of like 7000 or so.
Last night, I talked her up to the i3 model, which, I mentioned that Firefox uses AVX/AVX2 opcodes, at least for VP9 decode in software, and she watches YouTube, which uses VP9 when it can, so I thought that would be a good match-up. I think that the i3 has a Passmark of nearly 5000 or more. The Celeron and Pentium lack AVX/AVX2, which I feel is going to get more important in the next few years.
I just bought, for myself, an HP 14" from Walmart, with a Ryzen 3 3200U, which has nearly a 5000 Passmark. I upgraded it from 4GB DDR4 to 16GB DDR4 myself. I like it. (It supports AVX/AVX2.)
The question is, though, am I buying more than she needs, for a laptop? She's basically pretty happy with her 900-score Passmark IdeaPad 100S with a quad-core Atom, and she was like, "Why do I need performance?".
She's more interested in the color of the laptop's casing, than what's in it.
I'm much more of a functionality person, and a price/performance seeker.
Or suggest a laptop for Mom? Something other than a Chromebook (She uses Firefox, and ad-blocking, both of which you can't do on a Chromebook, to my knowledge), and Windows 10 "S Mode" (for the same reason).
Oh, and it must be fairly lightweight, NOT have "eMMC", must have REAL SSD, must have a minimum of 8GB RAM, or have the ability to upgrade it to 8GB or more, and have Windows 10 (Home or Pro, either is fine). No optical drive needed, and probably preferably not with one, because it adds weight.
Prefer 1080P screen, if it doesn't add too much cost, but 1366x768 is fine too, if it's cheap enough. (All of the Walmart laptops listed, are 768P / "HD".)
Oh yeah, NO "vipoutlet" as seller. Because reasons. (They sell on ebay, their site, as well as Walmart.com.)
Budget is around $300 or under, preferably under. Nothing over $500.
I don't think that she would agree to a refurb, I know that there are some decent deals on refurbs, maybe someone might be thinking of recommending a ThinkPad, those are "tanks", but she needs something lightweight, and most refurbs are older models, and not all that lightweight. Think of a 70-year-old woman, picking up a laptop with one hand. She needs to be able to do that, without straining/breaking her wrist. (And she's not a female Lou Ferrigno.)
(Her current laptop is like 2.2-2.3lbs, I think 4lbs, maybe 4.5lbs, would be the limit. My Ryzen 3 3200U 14" HP laptop, is around 3.3lbs, and I consider that fairly lightweight.)
I mean, I could just get her one like my 14" HP, but then I'd have to deal with the heck known as "S Mode", and escaping from it, and I had to remove some "cosmetics", to get at the screws to upgrade the RAM in mine. I personally don't care that it looks slightly crappy because of that, but she might.
Links to some of the laptops in this Hot Deals thread I started too.
https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...-128gb-or-larger-ssds-no-chromebooks.2567995/
I guess that the reason that I'm even asking this here, is that I want to "make sure that I get this right" for her, and neither of us has money to waste (contrary to what some of you might think about my purchasing), and that this might be "the last laptop that she ever gets".
She's already pretty familiar with Windows 10, thankfully, so there's no "old OS learning curve" here.
Or should I just get "the cheapest, but half-way decent" laptop, for $209:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Lenovo-i...te-Drive-Windows-10-Grey-81MV00FGUS/952957685
And not agonize over this. That MUST be better than her Atom laptop, right?
https://askgeek.io/en/cpus/vs/Intel_Atom-Z3735F-vs-Intel_Celeron-4205U
Moved from OT.
admin allisolm
She's got an older Lenovo IdeaPad 100S. She watches videos and looks things up online, to pass the time. No, I don't think that she does forums, or types much.
The IdeaPad 100S, has a Bay Trail Atom quad-core, 1.3Ghz (1.8Ghz "burst"). It has a Passmark of around 900.
Walmart has a few laptops, currently, mostly IdeaPads, with CPUs ranging from a Celeron 4205U ($209), to a Pentium Gold 5405U ($259), to an i3-8145U ($289), to an i5-8265U ($369). All have Windows 10, the Celeron and Pentium have 4GB RAM, the i3 and i5 have 8GB RAM, and all have 128GB SSDs, and 1366x768 screens.
I, of course, want "the best" for my Mom, as well as, I want to be able to buy a laptop for her, that's future-proof enough, that she doesn't need to buy another one in 3-4 years. (Unless it wears out physically, or the battery dies/swells up.)
So, the trade-off. Do I "go cheap", with the cheapest option, around 1.5x-2.0x as fast as her current laptop. (Actually, faster, the IdeaPad 100S has 2GB of RAM, 32-bit Windows 10, and only a 32GB eMMC.)
Or do I go for "the gusto" for the $389 one, with a Passmark of like 7000 or so.
Last night, I talked her up to the i3 model, which, I mentioned that Firefox uses AVX/AVX2 opcodes, at least for VP9 decode in software, and she watches YouTube, which uses VP9 when it can, so I thought that would be a good match-up. I think that the i3 has a Passmark of nearly 5000 or more. The Celeron and Pentium lack AVX/AVX2, which I feel is going to get more important in the next few years.
I just bought, for myself, an HP 14" from Walmart, with a Ryzen 3 3200U, which has nearly a 5000 Passmark. I upgraded it from 4GB DDR4 to 16GB DDR4 myself. I like it. (It supports AVX/AVX2.)
The question is, though, am I buying more than she needs, for a laptop? She's basically pretty happy with her 900-score Passmark IdeaPad 100S with a quad-core Atom, and she was like, "Why do I need performance?".
She's more interested in the color of the laptop's casing, than what's in it.
I'm much more of a functionality person, and a price/performance seeker.
Or suggest a laptop for Mom? Something other than a Chromebook (She uses Firefox, and ad-blocking, both of which you can't do on a Chromebook, to my knowledge), and Windows 10 "S Mode" (for the same reason).
Oh, and it must be fairly lightweight, NOT have "eMMC", must have REAL SSD, must have a minimum of 8GB RAM, or have the ability to upgrade it to 8GB or more, and have Windows 10 (Home or Pro, either is fine). No optical drive needed, and probably preferably not with one, because it adds weight.
Prefer 1080P screen, if it doesn't add too much cost, but 1366x768 is fine too, if it's cheap enough. (All of the Walmart laptops listed, are 768P / "HD".)
Oh yeah, NO "vipoutlet" as seller. Because reasons. (They sell on ebay, their site, as well as Walmart.com.)
Budget is around $300 or under, preferably under. Nothing over $500.
I don't think that she would agree to a refurb, I know that there are some decent deals on refurbs, maybe someone might be thinking of recommending a ThinkPad, those are "tanks", but she needs something lightweight, and most refurbs are older models, and not all that lightweight. Think of a 70-year-old woman, picking up a laptop with one hand. She needs to be able to do that, without straining/breaking her wrist. (And she's not a female Lou Ferrigno.)
(Her current laptop is like 2.2-2.3lbs, I think 4lbs, maybe 4.5lbs, would be the limit. My Ryzen 3 3200U 14" HP laptop, is around 3.3lbs, and I consider that fairly lightweight.)
I mean, I could just get her one like my 14" HP, but then I'd have to deal with the heck known as "S Mode", and escaping from it, and I had to remove some "cosmetics", to get at the screws to upgrade the RAM in mine. I personally don't care that it looks slightly crappy because of that, but she might.
Links to some of the laptops in this Hot Deals thread I started too.
https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...-128gb-or-larger-ssds-no-chromebooks.2567995/
I guess that the reason that I'm even asking this here, is that I want to "make sure that I get this right" for her, and neither of us has money to waste (contrary to what some of you might think about my purchasing), and that this might be "the last laptop that she ever gets".
She's already pretty familiar with Windows 10, thankfully, so there's no "old OS learning curve" here.
Or should I just get "the cheapest, but half-way decent" laptop, for $209:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Lenovo-i...te-Drive-Windows-10-Grey-81MV00FGUS/952957685
And not agonize over this. That MUST be better than her Atom laptop, right?
https://askgeek.io/en/cpus/vs/Intel_Atom-Z3735F-vs-Intel_Celeron-4205U
Moved from OT.
admin allisolm
Last edited by a moderator: