Extremely cheap PC for student

Orogogus

My former landlord's daughter is in the 10th grade, and since her laptop just died she's looking for a cheap computer to do schoolwork, YouTube, no gaming. What's the bottom range for this? She asked if you could get anything for $100 and I said I'm pretty sure not, but beyond that I haven't been in the market for several years so I don't really know.

Dell's floor is the Inspiron 660s, $350.

Google turns up a few guides:

http://lifehacker.com/5840963/the-best-pcs-you-can-build-for-600-and-1200 - $250 option running Linux
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-your-own-budget-pc-overclocking,3623.html - $350 option, no OS

I'm hesitant to recommend Linux to her. I'd put her on LibreOffice on her now-dead laptop in the past, but her teachers will send out needed files in Word, Powerpoint, etc. format rather than PDF and I've had trouble finding free viewers/converters for her before. She doesn't have much, if any, innate curiosity regarding computers, so problem solving tends to be difficult.

To be honest it seems like laptops are cheaper or close, going off of Anandtech's most recent guide. I assume the tradeoff is in life expectancy?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7553/best-budget-laptops-holiday-2013
- Chromebook at $200
- Dell Inspiron Touch at $380

I don't know anything about ChromeOS. Or tablets. Are those viable for classwork?

Any help or suggestions appreciated.

TychoCelchuuu

On the one hand things aren't quite at the point where LibreOffice and Google Docs work well enough with Microsoft Office that it's painless for luddites to use Linux, but on the other hand most 10th graders can probably figure that shit out, right? Kids are good at learning technology. 10th grade might be a little too old to just magically learn everything, though. Dell's shitty Inspirons or something similar from another manufacturer are probably good bets. You're right that laptops have worse life expectancy. If you want a $100 computer you can always just buy used from craigslist, though. This one is 50 bucks, for instance.

Thundyrkatz

I found the biggest hitch for buying an inexpensive laptop was the Microsoft office software.

There were lots of deals around a while back for the 299 or 399 laptop. But the fine print showed that the office software was either not included or was a 90 day demo. So that's usually another 200 bucks, unless you can get a student version, which should be less then

Also, as far as I know, Chrome has no Office software for school work.

bowen

You're pretty much fucked if your budget is below $600 and you want MS Office and you want to do things with it.

If you're okay with read only access, you can probably push it down to $300, maybe $200 if you go refurbished.

oldsak

I use a chromebook for class. I have other computers as well, but for notes and papers I use google docs exclusively. As long as she doesn't need any specific software besides basic office apps she should be ok with a chromebook.

I also watch a lot of netflix on my chromebook and have had no issues. Youtube I can't really comment on.

Pirusu

oldsak wrote: »

I use a chromebook for class. I have other computers as well, but for notes and papers I use google docs exclusively. As long as she doesn't need any specific software besides basic office apps she should be ok with a chromebook.

I also watch a lot of netflix on my chromebook and have had no issues. Youtube I can't really comment on.

I pushed my wife onto a Chromebook for work/school, and she loves it. I'd second this route. Hers was...$200? An acer. It's nice and light, the battery lasts a long time.

biochip

If you're near a university, see if they have surplus sales. I picked up an older model refurbished laptop for $50 to have in my office for word processing, with Ubuntu installed. Works great.

cabsy

I guess I don't understand why people aren't recommending OpenOffice as an office suite replacement? It's free, I've never had an issue with it, it works on linux and windows.

TychoCelchuuu

cabsy wrote: »

I guess I don't understand why people aren't recommending OpenOffice as an office suite replacement? It's free, I've never had an issue with it, it works on linux and windows.

LibreOffice is an OpenOffice fork that was mentioned in OP and in my response.

Essee

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

cabsy wrote: »

I guess I don't understand why people aren't recommending OpenOffice as an office suite replacement? It's free, I've never had an issue with it, it works on linux and windows.

LibreOffice is an OpenOffice fork that was mentioned in OP and in my response.

But on the other hand, I never have any problems with LibreOffice, so I don't know what the concern is... At least lately, whenever I've saved anything in LibreOffice, even if it originally came from somebody else's Word (I will grant I haven't done this with Powerpoint or Excel stuff lately), as long as I save it as .docx it's looked exactly the same in Word on other people's computers. Then again, my university does have OpenOffice on way more of their computers than they have MS Office. I've NEVER liked using MS Office, and over the years I've moved from WordPerfect to OpenOffice to LibreOffice, and I still never feel any need to use anything else. I don't feel the interface is more confusing than MS Office's for a non-computer person, either-- but then again, I hate Microsoft's interfaces for pretty much anything but Windows, so I may be a bit biased.

Orogogus

Thanks for the responses everyone. I'm leaning towards recommending her the Chromebook, but I'm just a little leery since I've never used one and inevitably I'm going to be tech support for it. Still, the price can't be beat.

Regarding LibreOffice -- I've had two problems that I can remember. The first was with Powerpoint -- there was one file that didn't want to open in any program, viewer or converter I could find, and I ended up just opening it at work for her and re-saving as PDF. I don't know why, it didn't even have any animations or anything fancy in it. The second was with their math problems, which her teacher sends out in Word docx, and 100% of the time the tables would get screwed up when opened in LibreOffice, with columns far too wide and going off the page and embedded images at the wrong size. I feel it's the teachers' fault for not saving in PDF, but that doesn't help my old landlord's daughter any.

These are problems that were solved, and she's still using LibreOffice now (or was, until the laptop died), but they're the kind of thing that make me reluctant to switch her over to a budget desktop running Linux, since as noted I'm the one who will have to look for solutions if anything doesn't just work.

Derrick

Orogogus wrote: »

Thanks for the responses everyone. I'm leaning towards recommending her the Chromebook, but I'm just a little leery since I've never used one and inevitably I'm going to be tech support for it. Still, the price can't be beat.

Regarding LibreOffice -- I've had two problems that I can remember. The first was with Powerpoint -- there was one file that didn't want to open in any program, viewer or converter I could find, and I ended up just opening it at work for her and re-saving as PDF. I don't know why, it didn't even have any animations or anything fancy in it. The second was with their math problems, which her teacher sends out in Word docx, and 100% of the time the tables would get screwed up when opened in LibreOffice, with columns far too wide and going off the page and embedded images at the wrong size. I feel it's the teachers' fault for not saving in PDF, but that doesn't help my old landlord's daughter any.

These are problems that were solved, and she's still using LibreOffice now (or was, until the laptop died), but they're the kind of thing that make me reluctant to switch her over to a budget desktop running Linux, since as noted I'm the one who will have to look for solutions if anything doesn't just work.

I'm wondering why this is your problem. Tech support for a former landlord's daughter wouldn't be a volunteer position, if it were me.

Davehead

Browsing through Best Buy's website revealed a new Chromebook for $199. They also had some refurbished models for less than that.

If Office is an absolute necessity, she should be able to get the student version. I got a copy through my college a couple years ago of the most current version (2010 at the time) for $100. I needed to give them my student email address to prove I was a student to install it - I don't know what kind of procedure would be involved for a high school student.

k-maps

There are now better alternatives for OpenOffice that are a basically more performant stripped-down version of MS Office.

BEHOLD: WPS OFFICE!

I fucking despise Libre/OpenOffice

CptKemzik

As someone who's been using a chromebook for daily computing since my older laptop prematurely kicked the can/was too costly and uncertain to get working again, it is probably the cheapest and most reliable thing to get for a high school student with what you've listed. Tech support (short of trying to use google cloud print/eprinting) should be nil since it's literally a netbook that only runs the Chrome web browser and a given google account.

Personally the only things I lost in the transition were something that could do semi-intensive gaming and record/master music (both of which can be done on my g/f's imac and are probably better not to have with me on the go; they would distract me from grad school coursework) but then word processing and the occasional presentation are the only productivity things I have to worry about.

bowen

OpenOffice and LibreOffice aren't really replacements. They're good if you have no other solution, but if I was going to recommend anything to someone for office replacement, it'd be google-docs or pages/numbers from apple.

LibreOffice is junk when you do more than type paragraphs.

Jorge_M

If you buy a used PC / notebook, you should get hardware which is at least not too outdated.

As an office suite I recommend SoftMaker FreeOffice (freeoffice com), it's a feature-packed, fast, well coded and reliable piece of software that you get without charge. I prefer it compared to LibreOffice and others mainly because of its brilliant compatibility with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It lets you work faithfully with Microsoft Office formats, whilst LibreOffice & Co destroy most formattings.