Need help choosing a 2 in 1 laptop

My mom is asking me about good 2 in 1’s to look at. UHHHHHHHH?

So I need help with this. I don’t want to do hp as their hardware is meh lately, and if it was 400 to 700 I think thats reasonable for any laptop. Don’t need a billion features, needs to be linux compatible, for doing thunderbird banking writing and firefox (so a decent i3 at least), and a screen good enough that a 60 year old woman with lessening eyesight can read. This will be compared to system76’s mini desktop, which is 599. We like american companies as well, so something at least assembled here would be neat. At least for my mom. She has a thing about that.

Anyways thanks.

I know bestbuy has the surace pro 4 for with the i5 cpu for 800 bucks.

Its obviously a little out of your budget, but its a more premium 2in1 product at a lower price simply because its an older model.

You might even be able to shop around and get one for a lower price.

Specifically need a laptop. Serviceable if possible. A surface was thought about, but Linux is a bit of a requirement at this point as my mom uses a lot of linux only tools now for office stuff.

IDK what to tell you.

Your standard 2 in 1 laptops all suck as tablets. They are heavy, and holding them is kind of awkward.

If push comes to shove, the dell inspiron 5000 series has a really solid 13 inch laptop with the new i5 4 core cpus for 650. It IS a 2 in 1…buuuuut its not something I would carry around town as a tablet.

You might just want to take your mom to a M$ store or to bestbuy so that she can see what a 2 in 1 is going to feel like in the hand.


You might also have to suck it up and throw linux on the surface pro.

I mean, it doesn’t need to be tablet of the year. Just have the functionality. My mom is actually really uncomfortable with most touch screens, she really just wants it for like mouse stuff so she doesn’t have to carry a USB or bluetooth mouse that would just get lost.

I’ll keep the dells in mind… Not opposed to older stuff either. I’m not even sure if theres a M$ store nearby lol.

in that case I feel pretty confident that the dell is what you want.

I remember reading somewhere that the dell touchscreens have full linux support. But you should check me on that.

Asus supposedly also has some really good 2 in 1s, but I haven’t had a chance to play with them, nor have I heard anything about linux compatibility with the touch screen.

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I have an ASUS T300 Chi. IIRC the touchscreen worked straight out of the box on Mint, Fedora, SuSE, and Manjaro. The problem was that the keyboard only works through Bluetooth and I couldn’t get it to function at the user/password screen. I feel like a keyboard that connects through actual electrical contacts would probably be much easier to get running.

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If you’re willing to go used, I’d have a look at an older XPS 12 9Q23 with the flip-screen. Not the lightest in the world but they seemed to be popular, are definitely still powerful enough for tasks you’d need a 2-in-1 ultrabook for, and you can get them used for around $200. Though it may not be the most user-serviceable thing in the world.

Really if you want user serviceability, you’ll need something from Lenovo. I would say an X220T but it’s bulky as hell and its screen resolution is Of The Devil.

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