Laptops for Christmas (for younger siblings)

Hardware Hub Laptops & Netbooks
1

Well, my family is not interested in a desktop, and Zen CPUs/Kaby Lake isn't coming out until next year, Polaris (except for the RX 470) and the low end Pascal cards was underwhelming.

Also, my siblings, younger sisters (teenagers) need a computer anyways. So between me, my mother and grandpa, we are shelling out some cash on getting two laptops (not one).

As far as the OS goes, something is going to have to be done probably about Windows 10 being an anal probe. That's a bridge I am going to cross later though. Right now I am just looking for the right laptops.

Obviously the mid-range ($750+) and especially high end gaming laptops ($1500+) are a bit out of the question most likely (unless I get really lucky and find one cheap during a sale). Not to mention the ultrabooks like Dell and Apple has aren't really feasible neither.

I was thinking a laptop with a CPU and GPU sufficent for Dolphin Emulation would be nice to grab, which isn't hard to find, since my Surface Pro 2 can handle it. The AMD APU laptops are out of the question though in this regard.

One of my siblings is a pretty casual user (she does play games, but mostly does normal things that can be done on a phone or tablet).
Another one of my siblings (the youngest one) is a lot more into gaming. She plays more often and has a Steam account (although not as active on it).

They are also both into art as well, which means they might share interest in the Surface Pro tablets, but the new ones are beyond budget as well.

I wonder if any of these laptop would be the best buy for them to get:


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834315672&ignorebbr=1

This might be risky, but would this be an okay idea:


Surface Pro 3 is also an option, but for anything intensive, I hear they thermal throttle and actually perform worse than Surface Pro 2, but have bigger screens.

2

Have you looked at the Inspiron series from Dell?

3

Not as of late...the only Inspiron I seen is the one known as the budget gaming laptop called Inspiron i7559 (i5 6300HQ, GTX 960M).

4

Is that out of your budget?

Try these:



5

I am gonna make a prediction and say that you will probably be able to swing the surface pro 4. I think it will go on sale and you might be able to BS some sort of student discount on top of the sale.

6

I'd look at getting a few used macbooks with GT330's in them and a windows 10 DVD and say "There ya go, figure it out kids". That would be an awesome present in my opinion. Get to learn that shit and a cool laptop lol.

shut up I'm wierd ok

7

Hmm, the 15" one with the i3 isn't as bad.

I know Dell makes some well built laptops, but their power supplies and batteries are questionable.

8

I've had mixed experiences with the inspiron series.

@DrewSaga You didn't explicitly specify a budget for each laptop, do you have a hard number I can work with? It sounds like you've got two slightly different use cases, but given the nature of the gift, I'm assuming you're going to want to get identical machines.

You mentioned not being happy with Windows 10. Are you considering a Linux laptop? There's a company that specializes in Linux laptops.

Any preferences on battery life, size and screen resolution?

9

In regards to the batteries and power supplies, I've never had a problem. At least, the batteries only degrade about 10% per year. If you're concerned about that, don't be. Replacement batteries and chargers are inexpensive anyways, so if they need replacing a couple years down the road, I'd just do it.

10

Yup... I forgot about system 76!

@DrewSaga Consider the Lemur seriously!! I have an alienware and run GNU/Linux on it. Yes, I do have win 10 dual booting, for when I want to play some windows games. But I am on GNU/Linux roughly 90% of the time. It's just so much better, and you can customise it any way you want. Most importantly, every kid should learn to be comfortable with GNU/Linux!!

11

I highly recommend the lemur, but only if you're interested in Linux. Since it's a gift, I don't exactly want you to upset your family. (although, it would make for good forum content)

12

He can always dual boot W10 on it! And quite frankly, I don't see much usability differences these days!

13

I'd say around $550-600 would be the max each, not counting software costs (Microsoft Office, I may search for cheap product keys). I am hoping that Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday would ease up my wallet some.

I'd say that there isn't really any preferable screen sizes nor resolutions (15" at 1080p would be a sweet spot, but not mandatory). Battery life at 5-6 hours is probably within reason at this price point. gives 2-3 hours for heavy usage.

14

I would go this route if the laptop were for me since I know a thing about Linux, I already have an old Dell Laptop with a Core i3 3110M that I still use occasionally, and it runs Linux. But I doubt my siblings are tech savvy enough yet to understand Linux, although they will probably learn soon enough if I had them run it so it might not hurt.

15

I doubt they will even notice, if you just install some codecs and stuff for them. It's merely a different desktop environment, and if you change the DE to Gnome, then it's like switching to a free OS X. If they can use a mac, they can use Ubuntu! May be sit down with them one afternoon, and tell them about a few basic commands, like sudo apt-get update etc.

Plus, they will have something unique.