Buying a laptop - suggestions

I just bought my daughter an HP laptop for Christmas for school. She had taken over my wife's laptop. I paid about $275 or so for it plus tax.

I cannot speak for the wireless hotspot only service plans. I have the hotspot on my phone and use it when traveling and in the field, and it is painfully slow at times. Other times it is okay.

imaudigger, post: 354086, member: 7286 wrote: Does anybody know of an inexpensive laptop that has a cellular based mobile hotspot type device built into it?

I think you'd be better off buying a standalone MiFi device. They're relatively inexpensive, and that way you'd have a wider choice of laptops.

That 2GB isn't going to go very far with a high school kid, though. My 17-year-old can easily chew through 6GB just with his phone. On his desktop he probably goes through many hundreds of GB every month.

As much as I hate to say it, you will probably be better off just getting internet service at your house for much cheaper than you can get through a mifi device. You can then have Netflix, internet access for your daughter, etc.

My wife and I love Netflix. We can watch a lot of the shows we watched growing up.

Jim said - "That 2GB isn't going to go very far with a high school kid, though."

That's fine. It's not my job to provide entertainment for my kids.
If she wants to use it more, she can pay the difference and she would not have a problem with doing that.

Your probably right about the external hot spot...the Go Phone is only $160, but it doesn't store any data to re-broadcast.
Are you aware of any generic mobile hotspots that are not provider specific? Meaning I could use it for any cellular carrier that is nearby?

The old GSM vs. CDMA exclusivity would block you was my guess, but, a quick Google shows that there are several coming out that are both. They are being marketed as global hotspots. None of the cell company's that I am aware of make there own and just re-brand someone else's, but, finding one that isn't through your carrier might be a challenge

I can't really give any advice concerning internet access either. It seems to me that paying for an internet connection at the house would likely be less expensive than getting a cell-based service, but then again, I haven't looked into this much at all.

As for computers, I know that a lot of the schools are using the Chrome laptops. I've heard they can be purchased for a very reasonable price. And if this is to be an academic computer, then it probably would have all of the utilities you'd need for a high school student.

I think that your daughter will burn through 2Gb of data pretty quick. And those cards are not as fast as wired service under the best circumstances.

How about an Ipad with 4G service and a bluetooth keyboard?

I need a cheap laptop, too, under $500. My Chief Accountant says I have to wait a couple of months until we pay a few things off. I'll use open office and could use a simple CAD program too. I looked on Dell and hp, it looks doable.

I bought a Chromebook which is really just a browser that looks like a laptop computer.

Dave Karoly, post: 354164, member: 94 wrote: I need a cheap laptop, too, under $500.

I am writing this on a Dell Inspiron 15, I-3 processor, 4Gb Ram, and touchscreen. I bought it from Office Depot a couple years ago for $400. It came with Win8 and I have upgraded it to Win 10, no problem. It has had Civil 3d loaded on it and seemed to work fine. The only shortcoming is that it will not hook up a second monitor.

Schools are given incredible discounts if they buy enough Chromebooks to have one for every student above Fifth Grade or so. Below about that age different options are recommended. Almost every class is geared such that computers are required for nearly everything imaginable.

I run only Lenovo's, I know as an option you can get a built in wireless modem, mine has an empty SIM card slot for that if I would of bought the hardware, so if you want to go that route, it is definitely available.

My cell carrier is T-Mobile (GSM) and the 4G LTE is way faster than my office internet, it is unlimited, BUT speeds are throttled back after you reach your plan limit, in my case 10Gb. So, depending on where you live and what ISP options are available, the wireless carrier may or may not be a better deal.

SHG

I just purchased three chrome books for my kids. They are a Web browser only device with storage on the cloud. My kids use them at school so this makes it possible to do their school work on their school accounts.

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Don't forget to ask about printing. Maybe all the teachers accept homework in electronic format, and maybe they don't. Also, there might be a need to print things to guide research at a library that doesn't offer wifi service. Case in point: my town library is quite limited; the library at the local university is open to everyone, but only registered students and staff get to use wifi.

My son's high school issued every student a chrome book this year. It has worked out very well, all the work is stored in the cloud and he can access it from any computer/tablet/smart phone with an internet connection.

Homework and papers are submitted electronically, even some tests. The students easily adapted, the teachers took a little more work.

I didn't think that the Chrome notebook would be an option as it only ran Google Apps and probably relied heavily on an internet connection.

It does seem like having your homework on the cloud would be beneficial for her as she has access to computers at her mom's house and at school. I'm just thinking that they may use a lot of data and perhaps not be so useful in areas with no reception.

Wireless internet is my only option where I live, so it's just a matter of if I want to use a mobile hotspot or a SIM card in the laptop.

imaudigger, post: 354278, member: 7286 wrote: I didn't think that the Chrome notebook would be an option as it only ran Google Apps and probably relied heavily on an internet connection.

I agree. Chromebooks are mainly for internet browsing, hardly any bells and whistles. Not great for creating word or excel documents. The thing I would worry about when getting a new computer is the RAM that it had. These days, memory is plentiful and you can always add more either on a HDD or the cloud. For light users, 4GB RAM is plenty; those that use AutoCAD or graphics heavy programs might want to get up to 6 or 8GB so there's no issues. Processing speed hasn't changed much (that I know of) and should be around 2.5 Ghz I believe.

I think you can go onto websites like Dell and create your own computer based on needs, and that should help give you an idea of what is good.

Personally, once my tax return comes in, I'm considering buying a Surface (they are pricey, but serve dual purposes... tablet/computer)

Fry's is always running great deals on laptops everyday. Today they had a HP 15.6" AMD A-10 Quad Core laptop with 6 gb memory, 1 TB HD, DVD-RW, HDMI, WIN 10 and free shipping for $450, or $350 with promo code. If you sign up with them, they send you promo codes everyday.

Having a separate mifi device gives you the freedom to hang it in a window or whatever is required to get a decent signal.
It would be annoying to have to sit in a specific place with the laptop just to get a reliable signal.

imaudigger, post: 354086, member: 7286 wrote: Seems like the 2GB of data would go much further if the data was being cached on a hard drive so multiple devices didn't have to download redundant info.

Not sure how this would work. Unless you mean you download the big file onto the laptop then copy it over bluetooth or wifi to a tablet /phone?
That would be unaffected by whether the mobile hotspot was in the laptop or a separate device. Much easier to login from another device to a mifi instead of routing it through the laptop. That would need some configuration.

The only benefit of having the mobile spot in the laptop is when you go out and about it's one less device you need to carry and plug in when you get there.