Which refurbished???

[curlyron]

Hi,
I’m new to PCHF. I’ve come to pick your brains!!
Help!!
I am a total technophobe and know nothing about laptops.
I want to buy a refurbished laptop but I don’t know what to go for…
I want to…

• Watch films and TV
• Sort out all my photos
• Maybe have a few Excel spreadsheets for home accounts
• Surf the net
  All for around £150 - £200.
  It doesn’t need to be fancy.

What should I look for??
(Not keen on Chromebooks - my kids have them).

Thanks
???

[veeg]

Hello

We would have to know what laptop you are looking for or at ?

[Bruce]

None of your requirements are demanding so basically almost any laptop will suffice.
Just be aware, with that price budget, you may be getting lower capacity and slower processor units.

Try and get at least a 500GB HDD, or a SSD is better.
You’ll need to think of more space if your photo library is large. But an external drive, or online storage, will help you there.

Get only Intel Core i3, i5, or i7. Stay away from Celeron or Core 2 processors as these are the older, slower Intel offerings.
Sorry - I don’t know the equivalent in the AMD world.

Get Windows 10 if available. Your budget will dictate an older machine which may have Windows 7, which is long off the supported list. But even Win10 only has about 18 months to go before it supposedly is no longer officially supported.

And get at least 4GB or memory, preferably 8GB.

If you think you’ll be connecting to an external monitor, look for a HDMI port.
If you want fast external peripheral speeds (printers, USB sticks, webcam, etc), look for USB3 ports.

[curlyron]

Hello

We would have to know what laptop you are looking for or at ?

That’s the question!! What should I look at? Go for?? I have no idea

None of your requirements are demanding so basically almost any laptop will suffice.
Just be aware, with that price budget, you may be getting lower capacity and slower processor units.

Try and get at least a 500GB HDD, or a SSD is better.
You’ll need to think of more space if your photo library is large. But an external drive, or online storage, will help you there.

Get only Intel Core i3, i5, or i7. Stay away from Celeron or Core 2 processors as these are the older, slower Intel offerings.
Sorry - I don’t know the equivalent in the AMD world.

Get Windows 10 if available. Your budget will dictate an older machine which may have Windows 7, which is long off the supported list. But even Win10 only has about 18 months to go before it supposedly is no longer officially supported.

And get at least 4GB or memory, preferably 8GB.

If you think you’ll be connecting to an external monitor, look for a HDMI port.
If you want fast external peripheral speeds (printers, USB sticks, webcam, etc), look for USB3 ports.

Hey, thanks so much for your reply and all the info!!
I really appreciate it!!

Just one more question- I’ve seen a lenovo think pad- I’ve never had one before. Not sure the difference between a thinkpad and laptop… ??
Thanks

[phillpower2]

Dell Latitude 13 7390 Windows 11 Ultrabook

The budget is a rather limiting factor I`m afraid with the above being the best that I could find, anything with a slightly larger screen came with CPUs that are incompatible with Windows 11 and so should therefore be avoided.

Tip for when purchasing a computer that only has a 256GB storage device, do not save any personal data to it because you will soon fill the drive up and cause yourself problems, save docs, pictures, videos and music etc to USB thumbdrives or a USB external storage drive such as the example here

[Bruce]

Lenovo brought out IBM and IBM called their laptops ThinkPads.
A Lenovo thinkpad is what normal people call a laptop.

[curlyron]

Dell Latitude 13 7390 Windows 11 Ultrabook

The budget is a rather limiting factor I`m afraid with the above being the best that I could find, anything with a slightly larger screen came with CPUs that are incompatible with Windows 11 and so should therefore be avoided.

Tip for when purchasing a computer that only has a 256GB storage device, do not save any personal data to it because you will soon fill the drive up and cause yourself problems, save docs, pictures, videos and music etc to USB thumbdrives or a USB external storage drive such as the example here

Thanks for your advice. I’m really impressed with the quick replies from people and the genuine, non judgy advice.
That amazon renewed laptop looks pretty good for what I want.

???

[phillpower2]

You are welcome

[Bruce]

Anything else you want help with?

[phillpower2]

No response from the OP so thread marked and closed.