Hello!
Looking for a laptop for around 200 to 250 euros. General purpose for this laptop is going to be browsing the web and not much else, maybe a bit of Word and Excel. (It's for work not gaming!)
Also I thought of buying used but what do you think? Can you get a good new laptop for 200-250 EU?
Use this website for reference if the device is available for purchase.
http://www.skytech.lt/
Thanks!
I'd try to find a used thinkpad potentially
Chromebook? Cheap (170 EUR), has all applications available without software license cost, works great. If you want, you can put any linux distro of your choice on them and get a more versatile computer than any Windows machine, or just stick to ChromeOS, which already has everything you would typically need.
Chromebooks are the most popular/most sold laptops in the world. It's the only laptop device that is doing well in sales and has an expanding market. Most laptops that were sold in the Western world in the last year, were Chromebooks. They make a lot of sense for most computing needs.
Otherwise, if you want the two year EU warranty, and money is really tight, check Medion B-stock, Medion is Lenovo in a more plasticky housing (it's a Lenovo B-brand), but doesn't have the Lenovo rootkits and has pretty good service in Europe, even has a special Italian service site.
I think I'd rather have a cheap windows 8 tablet over that.
It's not as fast, not as stable, and doesn't come with as much high quality free software and cloud storage... why would you go with a Windows laptop...
The truth is, that Microsoft has to make it's own hardware and invest hugely in industrial design to attract hipsters to sell Windows. Read the interview with Herr Groene, the chief designer of all Microsoft hardware products (http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Microsoft-Designer-Groene-Wir-bauen-Surface-um-Windows-zu-verkaufen-2852117.html). He literally says "Wir bauen Surface um Windows zu verkaufen", which means "we build Surface to sell Windows". Windows isn't doing all that hot, actually more people in the world use a Chromecast than Windows 10. Windows 10 also performs not so great, and does a lot of things users wouldn't want their OS to do. Whereas you get Privacy reminders and privacy configuration wizzards that pop up with ChromeOS, Chrome, Android, etc... basically anything Google... Microsoft doesn't offer anything like that, quite on the contrary, they have gone through great lengths to obfuscate the privacy settings as much as possible, and make it very hard to configure. On TechNet, the article that describes the BASIC privacy configuration on Windows, is 26 pages long saved as a PDF. The entire manual to install Arch from scratch is less than half of that. The big advantage of Windows was that you could get into personal computing on the cheap, because you could scrape up just about any cheap Taiwanese hardware, put Windows on it, and it just worked. That has now gone... Windows 8 and 10 have shown that hardware compatibility of Windows has become very precarious, and that performance on just about any Mac or Chromebook is intrinsically much better than on a Windows machine... yet Microsoft thinks it's a good idea to bring out the least efficient most expensive hardware ever to sell the fading Windows... it just makes no sense.
If money is tight, and there is no specific reason why you would need Windows, for instance because you need to run a specific Windows software at work, there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON at all to invest in anything even remotely related to Windows, because it's money lost forever. At least Google doesn't screw up as much as Microsoft in terms of software updates, so that you have a fighting chance of having some useful protection against hackers and malware on a Chromebook. Also, Google Apps are really good these days, and they're constantly getting better and more functional. You can actually render and edit video faster on a Chromebook than on ANY Windows laptop these days. Even the most expensive Microsoft option, the one they market as being a rendering machine (with an nVidia 840m for an extra 500 USD lolz, like... whatever...) , in the most expensive (almost 3000 USD) version, sucks balls and can't even playback 4k video, let alone edit it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82xP8_xs-Zw for a very good and objective review by a life long Windows user).
On a gaming desktop, Windows might still make a bit of sense to play typical PC games like shooters, but for anything else, and especially on other hardware form factors than a full blown old fashioned desktop PC, Windows makes no sense at all any more... it's over, it's done, it's nothing but hollow marketing that ever less people buy into. The sales and adoption numbers speak for themselves. You can't seriously recommend anyone these days to get a Windows laptop any more, because it's nuts, it's useless, it's a lost cause, a lost investment.
Something like Lenovo B50-30 Black? I'm looking at the specs it's looking nice.
There are some nice chromebooks, and you could stick linux on one if you don't like chrome OS.
Dell have a nice, well built chromebook.
There's another by asus, I think, that has a 1080p IPS panel if that's what matters to you too.
I don't know that particular model, but I'm using a Lenovo laptop these days, and I like it, it doesn't do anything stupid and works really well with linux.
I can second this. I have a Lenovo T410, works great with Linux. You can get them used here in the states 100-200 USD.