06-10-2020, 12:29 AM
Don't ignore AMD based machines. They have made huge strides recently in efficient laptops with long battery life and powerful processors.
Lenovo has good hardware but they had been doing wacky stuff with it. Starting about 2010, they installed rootkits on hard drives so they could reinstall Adware after users did a nuke and pave. Even after that, boot drives have a half dozen partitions that make it difficult perform upgrades at a later time.
Dell makes very good hardware but it can be expensive, and they have their own refurb/outlet store. https://www.dell.com/en-us/dfh/shop/refu...outlet-dfh The old standard Dealnews.com should have some deals for 'back to school' sales in a few weeks. School bookstores will also usually have computer specials. BestBuy will occasionally have decent discounts but their people are highly variable. Anything under $800 is generally a commodity product. Acer and HP also have good values.
Lenovo has good hardware but they had been doing wacky stuff with it. Starting about 2010, they installed rootkits on hard drives so they could reinstall Adware after users did a nuke and pave. Even after that, boot drives have a half dozen partitions that make it difficult perform upgrades at a later time.
Dell makes very good hardware but it can be expensive, and they have their own refurb/outlet store. https://www.dell.com/en-us/dfh/shop/refu...outlet-dfh The old standard Dealnews.com should have some deals for 'back to school' sales in a few weeks. School bookstores will also usually have computer specials. BestBuy will occasionally have decent discounts but their people are highly variable. Anything under $800 is generally a commodity product. Acer and HP also have good values.