Linux for an older laptop, for an older person

spudbynight

spudbynight

spudbynight

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I've a friend who is having problems with her laptop. She mentions that it keeps on crashing and giving her all sorts of issues. The laptop in question is running Vista so I don't think its spec will be very high. :)

She had been thinking about buying a new laptop for herself, and had identified something in John Lewis for £199. She is a pensioner and funds are tight for her. Those laptops are either Chromebooks OR lowend Windows machines.

I got to thinking that possibly running something like LXLE on her current laptop might give her as much performance and stability as she needs. I haven't used Windows on one of those low end laptops, but I can't imagine it being nippy. Am I right?

I was going to stick LXLE on a live USB stick and let her play with it for a day or two. What I don't want though is to install Linux for her and end up having to go to her several times a week.
 
She uses it for general web stuff. Nothing terribly taxing. She does use MSWord for some writing. She has had a couple of books published and wants to write another. I broached the idea of using google apps for writing a book and she did seem to wince a bit.

I don't think she uses all the bells and whistles of Word so I think she would be fine with Libre Office or similar.

I did have the same thought about a Chromebook as it would remove a lot of the headaches like updates and AV software for her.
 
spudbynight said:
I broached the idea of using google apps for writing a book and she did seem to wince a bit.

I don't think she uses all the bells and whistles of Word so I think she would be fine with Libre Office or similar.
Click to expand...

MS Office online is free - may be more of an option than google apps, as the user interface is similar to recent office versions.


spudbynight said:
She had been thinking about buying a new laptop for herself, and had identified something in John Lewis for £199. She is a pensioner and funds are tight for her. Those laptops are either Chromebooks OR lowend Windows machines.
...
I haven't used Windows on one of those low end laptops, but I can't imagine it being nippy. Am I right?
Click to expand...

Sub £200 I wouldn't even think about a new Windows laptop - most have 2GB ram, no SSD and very low clock speed dual or maybe quad cores (e.g. <1.5Ghz).

If Used laptops are an option, something like Dell E6420 series laptops are available for £150, which gets you 2.5Ghz i5-2520M, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD, with Windows 7. Build quality is also vastly superior with them being Business class laptops rather than the quality of low end machines.
 
I used Chromium on an old Dell Mini 9 and was pretty impressed, as that was the old single core Atoms, and some god awful SSD...
I really do like modern ChromeOS machines, they are fast, and easy.

Recently installed Ubuntu on an old Vista licensed Core2 Vaio, and it really brought the system back to life. It does have 4gb DDR2, but still on the same crappy old mechanical drive.
Worth looking into the spec of the old laptop I'd think!
 
Will Chromium update once installed? I spoke with her about ChromeOS and she was really keen.

I had a look at the machine and it is achingly slow under Windows. She has 3GB of RAM and a 2.5Ghz Core processor. I think it might be a Core2 Duo. I ran LXLE from a live USB stick and it was much more responsive.
 
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