Hi,

A problem I have been coming up against is that a lot of the newer, budget Windows laptop (which I will immediately replace with my distribution of choice upon receipt) have memory soldered on the motherboard. This is a decision which brings the utmost distate to my mouth; I’m looking for budget laptops around the $300 mark (new) that let me upgrade their parts. Which models should I be looking at?

I am aware that the used market is fairly decent right now but I’d like to take a look at what’s coming up alongside looking at used gear. Thanks.

  • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    2 years ago

    Do you need a laptop?

    A mini PC may be a better bet - $300 on a mini PC will get you more hardware than a laptop at the same price as you’re not paying for the screen or chassy but you’d then need to supply a screen (TV would do), keyboard and mouse.

    If you need the mobility then it’s a no go, but if you’re more looking for a device at home a PC is better value.

    If you do need the mobility of a laptop, then you won’t get anything much new for $300 as others have said. You’d either need to increase your budget or look at second hand as others have said.

    • billgamesh@lemmy.ml
      1·
      2 years ago

      May I recommend further a good desktop pc w/upgradable parts and a used thinkpad laptop for travelling? You can get a good thinkpad for work and small games for $20-50 and they tend to last forever and be easy to repair. my favorite is X series

  • Eugenia@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    Most laptops won’t allow you to update parts, especially at that price. I think you’re better off getting a cheap laptop that has good reviews and you verify that Linux works in it. Personally, I’ve converted a few chromebooks to linux (making sure first that the CoreBoot BIOS/firmware works on these laptops).

  • thehatfox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    You will struggle to find anything decent at that price new.

    Plenty of good used options though, a used ThinkPad will have great Linux compatibility and be serviceable. They can be very cheap depending on how older hardware you can tolerate. There are other business grade laptops from Dell, HP etc that have good refurb deals too.

  • fachpersonal@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 years ago

    Get a used Thinkpad. Shop around eBay for a T480 or T490 which should be at that price range. Solid machines with great Linux compatibility. Anything new will be much worse at that price point. If you desperately searching for something new maybe a HP 255 G9 with a Rzyen 3 would be fitting. Not as good built quality wise and I’m not sure about Linux compatibility but at least it is upgradable. (https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c08017466)

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      2 years ago

      Thanks, yes, I’m looking at the T480 as an option. I was just curious about what I could find new in this range that fits my needs, and so far it seems like there isn’t such a product.

  • herescunty@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 years ago

    I got a used business dell a couple of years ago for £300. It still had active service warranty which dell transferred over to me. I upgraded the ram to 32gb and the ssd to 1tb and it was pretty decent for the time - i7 10th gen from memory (without grabbing the thing to check).

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      Could you tell me the model you got? I’m very interested in older laptops used in the enterprise, especially if they are a viable alternative to the older Thinkpad line

      • herescunty@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 years ago

        It’s a latitude 7390. I was mistaken, it’s an 8th gen i7, but still pretty new at the time I bought it. Bonus - Dell put all their service manuals online so you can always find instructions on how to tear down and upgrade

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      2 years ago

      I was simply asking for newer laptops. I am considering the used thinkpads alongside any recommendations here so I feel more informed

  • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.mlBanned
    1·
    2 years ago

    A used ThinkPad? I use Debian 12 GNOME (animations on) on an old Core i3 2nd gen desktop with 4 GB RAM and no SSD, and I can use 3-4 Firefox tabs with music player, PDF reader and Thunar file manager quite well.

    Shove in extra 4 GB RAM and put in a $50 SATA SSD if possible, and you have a snappy machine.

  • juergen@feddit.deDeutsch
    1·
    2 years ago

    I can recommend minifree.org - this is a shop from Leah Rowe, who is the lead developer of the libreboot project. That is a (more secure) bios alternative, related to coreboot.

    I bought my Thinkpad T400 from there, some 6 years ago or something. I am still writing on it and i can highly recommend it. However, today i would buy a smaller form factor. so 12,8° instead of 14°.

    So it is kind of heavy compared to a macbook air and not the fastest machine, but you can get your stuff done. And it is really really durable, which is the reason i bought one of the older thinkpads.

    Around $300, there would be the libreboot 820: https://minifree.org/product/libreboot-820/

    And with minifree.org you can be sure that the linux/libreboot/coreboot support is really great. Because: since Leah is a developer, she testes everything beforehand and fixes problems when she notices it. So i would recommend to describe what you would want to do. For instance, initially i wanted to use a encrypted harddrive and i had installed the grub variant, but later upgraded to libreoot with seabios. This was much better and fixed the problems with my encrypted harddrive. But i suspect leah would have found out and fixed that already, had i told her that.

    Also for instance, seabios has better openBSD support.

  • danielfgom@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    2 years ago

    The laptop that doesn’t exist… For they money you might find something with an Intel Atom or Pentium inside. Which is about as far as having a mouse on a wheel as your CPU…🤣

  • anamethatisnt@lemmy.world
    11·
    2 years ago

    Soldered RAM has better performance and reliability while consuming less power than socketed RAM and users of budget machines rarely want to upgrade. If you find one with socketed RAM at that price, colour me impressed!

    For an upgradable laptop frame.work comes to mind but even their outlet is $200 above your budget.
    https://frame.work/marketplace?outlet[]=Factory+seconds&outlet[]=Last+gen&outlet[]=Refurbished&availability[]=in_stock&availability[]=coming_soon