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  • Apr 30th, 2018 8:05 pm
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Dec 1, 2010
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I would say its a good price for her needs, more then enough to play everything and quick enough. From the display it says it has a webcam, I'm sure all laptops have at least a 0.3MP webcam built into them, seeing as Windows 10 is rotated around CORTANA, and CORTANA needs a MIC to work they would include a CAM on the laptop and not just a MIC. You can always call DELL and ask yourself. Price is decent for brand new, can't beat that.
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Mar 23, 2009
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CPU is acceptable. Is there any way to get something like this with an SSD? CPU is fine, but the HD will be a drag. Would it be any cheaper to get a 14" laptop with the same 1366x768 resolution?

I don't see any evidence of a webcam, but ideally you'd get a machine with 720p HD and decent low light quality. Most of the 480p webcams suck.

EDIT:

Strange. You can't get a 14" model. They're just 15.6". And if you add an SSD, it jumps to $700. Ouch.
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Apr 27, 2018
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Seems good enough for me, yeah - have seen way worse deals. Not the kind of market which sours through blockchain-shenaningans. ;) According to most other sites, this model got an integrated webcam.
“He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.” - Terry Pratchett
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Feb 24, 2007
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Stay away from Windows OS platform altogether. You do not need anything that advanced. Firstly, I would attempt to get a much older laptop which you can install one of the Linux distros (for seniors I would recommend Endless OS).

https://endlessos.com/thank-you/
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Apr 27, 2018
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Ah, not important for you at all - just joking about the fact, that the crypto-miner-scene succeeded into making "gamer" pc equipment way more expensive lately. ;)
Last edited by Connington on Apr 29th, 2018 10:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
“He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.” - Terry Pratchett
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crystallight wrote: Thanks. I don't think an SSD will be of much benefit to her. It doesn't necessarily need to be blazing fast. When you say "HD will be a drag", do you mean that this i3 won't be good enough to play HD videos smoothly?

And I think a 14 inch screen would be too small for her unfortunately.
Yea I was going to say, the recommendations for your grandma here are, lol. Like no one took the time to read the initial post. It's for [OP]'s grandma who is using a 10+ year old desktop. No doubt she is on XP or Windows 7. She doesn't need an SSD its a total waste of money, a regular HDD is good enough, and she doesn't need to learn how to use a new O/S like Linux.

Windows 10 on a regular spinner hard drive is the same. The [OP] is obviously going to make the computer work and look identical to the laptop with a few minor changes, but for her it will be blaring fast.

This processor and the onboard graphics Intel® HD Graphics 520 are more then enough to play 720p and 1080p videos without a problem. The screen on the laptop doesn't even go 1080p as its 1366 x 768 which is still HD resoultion, just at 720p HD. I doubt your grandma would notice the difference, and even if you hooked it up to a 1080p HDTV Flatscreen the computer would have no problem playing videos. It's perfectly fine.
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May 27, 2012
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Whitehorse, YT
how about lenovo t420 hooked up to 19 or 22 in monitor with ssd?
- wireless mouse/keyboard
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Jul 3, 2017
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Somewhere there's a giant pile growing of useless 1 Tbyte throwaway drives from cheap laptops and desktops.

Either buy an SSD or an HDD of decent size. I would strongly recommend an SSD. Not only does it save power and extend battery life in a laptop, it's much faster. Your grandma is old - she doesn't have time to sit around waiting for Windows to boot.
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Jul 9, 2007
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Richmond
crystallight wrote: I've been looking for a laptop for my grandma. She's using an old desktop that's easily 10+ years old. Here are her needs:
  • General internet browsing
  • Emails
  • Skyping
  • Watching videos. Not really movies but more so videos from family (grandchildren, vacations, bdays, etc). I mention this because she doesn't need some super awesome screen to watch movies, but I suppose a good screen is still better than a bad one.

I want this laptop to last a long time for her so I'd like to get an i3 or better (or at least not a celeron). I've checked out several websites and it seems this is the best deal. http://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/dell-lap ... ftsb_s143e

For $430 you get:
  • Dell Inspiron 15 3000
  • 6th Generation Intel® Core™ i3-6006U Processor (3MB Cache, 2.00 GHz)
  • 4GB, 2400MHz, DDR4
  • 1TB 5400 rpm Hard Drive
  • Intel® HD Graphics 520
  • Windows 10 Home 64-bit English
  • 15.6-inch HD (1366 x 768) Anti-Glare LED-Backlit Display

What do you RFDers think, is there a better deal out there?
I'm also wondering if this laptop has a webcam? I don't see anywhere on the website if it does or not. It's not a huge deal if it doesn't, as she already has one to use with her desktop. But it'd be much simpler if it already had one built in.
Just make sure you fresh install Windows 10 to remove all the Dell junk.
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I’m curious. What’s her existing desktop and is it worth upgrading? I have an ancient desktop circa 2009 that’s fine after I upgraded the CPU and got an SSD for it. It’s actually my primary Windows 10 desktop. Hell, even without the CPU upgrade it was fine for grandma. I went from an Athlon II X3 435 to a Phenom II 1055T but even the 435 was acceptable. I did also upgrade the RAM from 4 GB to 8 GB but for grandma, 4 GB would be fine. It included an on-board nVidia GeForce 9200 so h.264 playback is hardware accelerated.

The HD OTOH was a drag on the OS, and that was a 7200 rpm desktop drive. A 5400 rpm laptop drive is often noticeably worse.

BTW, I only paid $400 for it in 2010. It was a relatively low end machine even back then, not some uber fast boutique gamer machine that would have more longevity.
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Dec 11, 2003
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crystallight wrote: Why is a normal HDD useless? I know they're not as fast as an SSD but they worked for many decades and likely still more common than SSD's.
I also think 1TB is already pretty big in capacity. She probably won't even use a quarter of that lol.
A normal HDD is not useless except in a laptop when there is only 1 slot for a harddrive. If you're using regular SATA drives then it's either HDD or SSD. I replaced my 1 TB HDD with a 1 TB SSD. There's no comparison in speed. I press the power button and 5 seconds later Windows is loaded. I copy files to my SSD and it's so much faster. I put my HDD into an external case and I'll use it as storage.

Just throw in a 500 GB SSD into your grandma's desktop and use her current HDD as storage (D drive). Everything will load much faster. I did the same with my 10 year old desktop. It works for me. I don't do much on my computer. Mostly surfing the net, emails, etc.
P10 2.4 THz CPU || 8 TB Ram || WD 300 TB HD || Nvidia w/ 32 TB Memory

"You're only as dumb as you look"
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Jul 3, 2017
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crystallight wrote: Why is a normal HDD useless? I know they're not as fast as an SSD but they worked for many decades and likely still more common than SSD's.
I also think 1TB is already pretty big in capacity. She probably won't even use a quarter of that lol.
Expectations change over time. By now Windows 10 pretty much assumes that everyone has an SSD for performance - not that it won't work with HDD, it's just going to be increasingly painfully slow. And cheap laptop 1 Tbyte drives are especially slow. It's just a technology whose time has passed in laptops. The only reason manufacturers offer them is to keep the entry level price low. It's like the base model car with steel wheels, manual transmission, no power brakes or steering, no radio etc. - yes it works, but it's understood that you wouldn't want it.
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Mar 23, 2004
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crystallight wrote: Not gonna lie, I have no idea what the bolded means lol. Care to explain?
It means mining has no effect on the prices of laptops, unlike say desktops with gaming GPUs ;)

Anyway, the laptop listed in the first post seems great for Grandma. I would have said the screen is low res but then most grandmas probably want things to be "larger" on the screen so lower res is automatically doing that for you without having to set up scaling and stuff.

Only caveat is the lack of SSD--if you can add one after purchase that'd be great (because you don't want to have to pay $700 for the model that has one). If not, I'm guessing your grandma probably won't know any different given what she was using before. An HDD as an OS drive is never "good enough" BTW, it's terrible and hobbles the performance of any computer since the advent of Core2 processors, but if your grandma has never used anything modern then she wouldn't notice the difference--overall this machine will still be faster than the old one. It's gonna have its legs cut off with no SSD but she's not going to know any different.
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Aug 16, 2006
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Why don't you get your grandma a chrome book. My mom only watch chinese shows, so I got her a chrome book for $300.
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dimsum69 wrote: Why don't you get your grandma a chrome book. My mom only watch chinese shows, so I got her a chrome book for $300.
$130 more for a real laptop with a real CPU seems like a lot better idea to me. However if on a tight budget it might be a good idea, depending on her use.
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crystallight wrote: I'm not entirely sure about the desktop. It's probably around 12 or 13 years old. Windows XP. Not sure of the processor. RAM is probably 1GB.
I think it's easier just to replace the machine entirely lol.
Yeah 13 years old is a lot different than 10 years old. No sense in updating a 13 GB XP box machine with 1 GB RAM.

SSD is not mandatory but it actually is just as important as the CPU IMHO. But for grandma that only surfs and Skypes, it may not be as big of a deal.

I definitely do not recommend a Linux machine, unless grandma likes using the Terminal... As for Chrome, it can work well for very specific usage but if you want go beyond that you’re stuck. Eg. Grandma wants to load her recipe manager that her bridge partners use? She’s probably stuck if she’s on Chrome.

BTW, in my house I have macOS and Windows
machines, and a Linux machine. That last Linux machine was a ChromeOS machine previously. For grandma’s usage at that price range, Windows 10’is the sweet spot IMO.
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Apr 7, 2017
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Brantford
For the similar price 419$ I got the Lenovo idea pad 320 with i3 7th generation processor, rest spec were the same

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