Cheap laptop for School work etc
- Thread starter koolpc
- Start date
Something in new the £200 range is likely going to be very slow running Windows unfortunately. It'll be tough to get anything other than a Celeron - Some places will do refurbed ones with 30 days warranty but not usually anything longer.
New laptop for £200 is pushing it really, you end up with bottom of the barrel stuff which is just about capable of the job.
HP Stream 14-ax000na is within budget, new and a Windows 10 laptop.
I'd highly recommend you check out a place like gigarefurb, you'd get a lot more for your money plus a years warranty which is extendable.
HP Stream 14-ax000na is within budget, new and a Windows 10 laptop.
I'd highly recommend you check out a place like gigarefurb, you'd get a lot more for your money plus a years warranty which is extendable.
Also consider a used Thinkpad. A few months ago I managed to get a T440s with 1080p IPS screen, 12gb RAM, a 256gb SSD and a relatively new OEM extended battery for £170. It was a little marked but otherwise a great deal. I did get a good deal but you could certainly get something similar for £200 to £300.
But do check the specs before buying as some Thinkpads can have low memory and a very poor screen.
But do check the specs before buying as some Thinkpads can have low memory and a very poor screen.
Last edited:
Was thinking of getting a Dell Optiplex instead. Refurb
This should be good enough? She has a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Would need to buy a wireless USB dongle for it (recommend a decent but cheap one?)
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHz
- 4GB RAM + 250GB HDD
- Intel GMA Graphics
- DVD Writer
- Windows 10 Home 64bit
This should be good enough? She has a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Would need to buy a wireless USB dongle for it (recommend a decent but cheap one?)
For a bit more you should be able to. Get something with an SSD. Which will make a massive difference to the speed of the machine.
I can put an ssd in. Otherwise the spec should be ok?
Good point
Yes the spec is pretty good. The E8400 is more than twice as powerful as the Celeron you'd find in a £180 laptop. I recently bought myself an Optiplex 9020 SFF for work, with 4th gen i5 for less than £200 and it's a very capable machine. Put my own SSD in with a 1TB mech drive plus ordered an additional 4GB ram stick and it really flies along.E8400 is soon 11 year old 2c/2t CPU so wouldn't exactly trust it to run Win10 and other modern bloat.
Some five years old refurbished business laptop would likely have stronger CPU.
Also 4GB is very little for Win10.
It would be fit amount for Win7 or especially some lighter desktop environment Linux.
Would expect little less outdated hardware to be available.
That's pocket calculator's hardware in oversized shell.
There are very likely smarthphones beating that in everything from processing power to memory and storage.
For start that 32GB eMMC is straight from cheap phone and has barely room for Win10 after few updates.
OP has a £200 budget. A dual core with 4gb ram is more than enough to run W10 with basic office/internet duties. Win10 runs on low end hardware extremely well. It's old hardware yes, but still more powerful than the basic Celerons in <£200 laptops.
Also the HP laptop I mentioned was an example of something new with warranty as requested by the OP. I run a couple of tablets with similar hardware, and while not quick they get the job done. They are a functional computer still.
unless theres any sales on then brand new for £200 you be looking at the low cost which shouldnt be an issue as such depending on the work load, but they will have celeron processors, 2gb ram and 32gb emmc or if you look at the lenovo ideapad 130 it has a 64gb emmc which in my experience having just sold an old dell version with the 32gb emmc will be better in the long run as its double the storage to cover the window updates, plus they have sd card slots for extra general storage.
although i have seen some laptops with an A6 9220, 4gb ram, 1tb hdd within the budget, but C world atleast is out of stock as they are clearly more appealing that the other types i described.
plenty of pc options on the used market and you dont have to buy a branded system either.
although i have seen some laptops with an A6 9220, 4gb ram, 1tb hdd within the budget, but C world atleast is out of stock as they are clearly more appealing that the other types i described.
plenty of pc options on the used market and you dont have to buy a branded system either.