Hey everyone. I am looking at replacing my wifes old laptop. I am looking for the best bang for my buck under $500. She is finishing up school and games occasionally so i would prefer it had good graphics but i know that's a lot to ask of a $500 laptop. an intell HD 4000 would be suffecient. she only plays league of legends and dragon age 1 & 2.
At that price you are always sacraficing something. In this case it would be sleekness and resolution. This is a decent option. I'm sure others will give you different and possibly better ones.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834216576
Maybe an Asus Vivobook S500 with Core i5 without Windows 8 (but linux instead) should be under 500 bucks in the US, as it's under 500 EUR incl VAT in Europe. You can just use the windows version she already has or even better install a distro of your choice with gnome or kde to have an efficient touch interface, those games should work perfectly fine in linux and most future games will come out primarily for linux anyway, and it's a huge upgrade from windows in terms of user experience and performance. The vivobook has intel graphics, and has a nice touchscreen, which is a feature that seems popular with women, and which actually works efficiently in linux. And it's Asus quality of course, in laptops Asus still provides superior quality. I would recommend installing fedora on it with gnome, very easy to use and works great for touch screens, has the latest intel graphics drivers that are available, and by chosing linux you're not only able to get 100 bucks better hardware for the budget, but you're making the computer a lot more fun and safe to use.
You are the worst kind of linux user.
Lol, probably, but care to elaborate what you mean?
According to Valve, linux gamers are the 1%-ers of the 21st century, they've made up statistics just to make that statement, and that's not something to be ashamed of, I'll wear that patch with pride...
Linux is great, but pushing it like a Jehovas witness pushes religion isn't. The OP made no reference to an OS, but you started pushing Linux like it's your personal job to do so. He's looking for a computer that will work well for his wife who is more than likely a average user, not a linux user.
all I know is that vivo looks nice. I5 under $500. But yes, screw linux for average users.. its too much driver work or hassle for a lot of programs an etc for something that doesnt know about that stuff. Just uninstall it and install windows 7 or 8.
I mean relaly. Lets say her camera doesnt have readily available linux drivers or something. She doesnt want to go to a different computer to get the pictures then transfer them to her computer.. its an unnecessary step and time comsuming.
Well scuse me mr average user, I suggested a good solution for a touchscreen quality laptop under 500 bucks, which excludes paying 100 USD for an operating system that doesn't provide a great touchscreen experience, so it's my opinion that what I posted was perfectly in line with the OP, and I didn't push linux but suggested also to reuse the windows operating system of the old computer. And you bring in Jehova's whitnesses with the argument that I should stick to the OP's question? Wow...
That is such an unsubstantiated post full of ignorant false prejudices, but I note that you agree that the vivobook is a nice option under 500 bucks, and that's the main thing, isn't it... whether used with a recycled windows license or a linux install (that needs no drivers by the way, it's an intel graphics adapter, which excludes having to install extra drivers, all the hardware compatibility, like a millionfold larger than windows hardware compatibility, is already in the linux kernel, and that includes things like cameras and smartphones).
Thanks guys. That is exactly what i was looking for getting her. I also am a fan of Asus i have a K61ic -A2 and its still runs strong 4 years later.
It isnt unfounded. The problem is not thats its unavailable, the issue is that a casual/normal PC user wont know or want to look for the drivers and etc. Windows comes with a lot of generic drivers bult in with a near unlimited plug and play catalog. This is because companies make them for their devices for windows because how many people already use it. It's the reason there are so many games and etc that easily run on windows and not mac or linux. A casual/normal PC user doesn't want to learn the work-arounds and doesnt want to search for drivers and etc. They don't want to have their friend come do this stuff for them either. It isn't really a linux problem, its a lazy user and public attitude of computing problem.
Linux is getting better all the time, but we need more developers to hop on board to make these thigns automated like they are on windows. The good news is that as windows pushes to be a device and service company, people will gradually move away because the hardware folks will move to a more open platform.. like the reason there isnt as much support for mac (even though that has increased greatly over the recent years), but mac is still a small percentage of all the PC's in the world.
Linux doesn't require drivers, it just works because the kernel provides the largest hardware compatibility of any system on the planet. It's such a windows thing to think that you need drivers. In linux, you only need drivers for a few proprietary hardware devices of which the manufacturers refuse to provide information on their products, mainly nVidia is such a hardware manufacturer, but they make linux drivers that do exactly the same as windows drivers, and provide an easy installation function via their website just the same as for windows, which is of course a major inconvenience for linux users, because linux users are not accustomed to having to search for drivers like windows users. Linux users also don't have to search for software everywhere because all the software they could ever want is easily accessible in the package manager/software center/appcafé/whatever it is called in the linux or BSD distro of choice.
Most modern distros come with a powerful automated hardware config utility, and you don't need annoying programs sucking up resources to tell you that you need to interrupt your work for a few hours to download updates, like is the case with windows.
Why are there no linux drivers provided on a disk with hardware... because you don't need them, the linux kernel is already compatible with exponentially more hardware devices than windows has ever been when it was still compatible with a large selection of hardware, which is not the case anymore.
The first thing every hardware manufacturer does before bringing out a new product, is to make sure that the necessary drivers are merged in the linux kernel. This happens before the product comes to the market, so that it can be tested thoroughly in a beta kernel, and then the product is released when that beta kernel is released, so that it immediately works 100%, unlike in windows, where drivers are released at the same time the product is released, and the early adopters of the hardware device have a lot of problems because the drivers are not stable or other problems.
Macs work perfectly fine on linux, in fact, Linux Thorvalds himself uses a MacBook Pro with Fedora or OpenSuSE because he likes the hardware. Every new mac that comes out immediately works in linux like any other Intel-based PC, with the exception of some functions of the retina macbook pro, that took a few weeks of tinkering after it first came out, not because of Apple as such, because they were faced with the same problems on their BSD based platform, and the problems were worked faster than it takes nVidia to work out windows graphics drivers problems.
Look at the video by Logan on what to do with a new windows laptop. Like wow, and that was with a preinstalled and preconfigured system, which is not how it comes out of the box. In reality, first of all, all the hardware drivers have to be installed, and if you're lucky, windows will actually detect all the devices in your computer without problems, which is not selfevident for windows. Then you have to debloat it and buy stuff to use it... like wow, bitter if you're just paid a large amount of money for the hardware.
If he would have installed a modern linux distro on it, it would have had a bunch more functionality and be fully installed and configured, including customized desktop bling and steam, from totally scratch, in less than 8 minutes, without having to go to any websites or worry about registry errors or cookies, and without having to say three times "if you don't know what it does, leave it", because it would all be open source software, and you would know exactly what it did.
Stop thinking about linux in windows terms, it's such a windows thing to mistrust simplicity and look for the catch, with open source software there really is no catch, it just works, immediately and without having to look for stuff.
Suppose I want a 3D printer. Linux compatibility: check, no driver needed, the manufacturers of all the parts of 3D printers that are available on the market have made sure that there is linux kernel support before bringing their product to the market. Blender for making models and reprap for actually printing, check, free and open source software in the standard repository, one click away from free and immediate install in mere seconds. Whereas with Windows: "shit I can't use the 3D printer that I've assembled myself because there are no drivers for it, let's search the internet for a few weeks, maybe something will come up... well I don't know what this driver does, but it's the only way I can make my printer work, so I'll download it... hey it has installed a new spybar in my browser, that's unfortunate, but maybe my printer will work... oh I need 3D modelling software, let's go to an online store and see what I need to buy to have that... damn that's expensive, it's as expensive as my printer, I have to save up a few months for that... ok so I've bought the modelling software, now how to actually print this stuff... let's search the internet again... oh, I have to buy this printing software... well it's not that expensive, it's only 20% of the price of my printer... oh look I can print at half the rated speed of the printer now and it only crashes two out of three times during a print job."
I do agree that linux is getting better all the time, it's already 20 years more technically advanced that windows, and it's still evolving, faster than ever before.
I admit I am no linux guru by any means, and maybe (probably) I am out of date on my linux knowledge. But the internet is littered with sites like these:
http://www.linux-drivers.org/ ... so these shouldnt exist? They have books and websites dedicated to making linux drivers. Anyway, I get your point that drivers may not be a problem anymore and don't work the same way they do in windows there is still software and firmware that connects an OS to hardware, so they do exist. But the point is that but there are still a lot of programs and hardware that dont run on linux. It would be really disapointing for something that doesnt know better to find out that a new game that they bought doesnt run on linux.
I know there is work arounds for many games and I know its not really a linux problem, but a developer problem for not making support for the OS, but that is the world we live in for now.
Maybe my camera example wasn't the best example, but lets look at a very popular game series like call of duty, which has no official support for linux. This is the case for many games. Most regular people dont know how to work around it and don't want to learn. They just want it to work, and treyarch doesnt deal with linux as an OS, like many game developers.