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Plankton · 05-11-2020, 10:14 AM

Spending $300 on a laptop, or even a tower isn't a good idea. You should wait until you can at least afford something in the $500+ range. Cheap computers/laptops will start out working normally (if at all, actually), but once you start browsing and loading it up with cookies/temp files you'll likely see performance drop significantly as your low-end system resources are depleted. Your experience will become 'click-and-wait' while it tries to catch up, and that can be frustrating at best, that is if it doesn't just lock up all together over time.

What I did with my last laptop was to buy a gaming PC, then I maxed out the RAM. I paid $800 for a Dell G3 (on sale at the time) and then another $120 for 32 Gigabytes of RAM (Random Access Memory) and installed it myself. I paid under $1k for a $2k comparable laptop because tech companies and resellers know the ignorance of the average consumer. RAM is what your system needs in order to function properly, and the more of it, the better. It's system memory and different from the memory on a hard drive, which stores files. Once RAM gets used up, it's gone until you reboot. It's the same with on-board graphics memory, but that's another avenue all together and you won't need to worry about that unless you start gaming. Companies will put out low-cost products with low-end RAM and then jack up the price on units with basically the same specs but more RAM, and the markup for just having more RAM preinstalled is ridiculous. It's capitalism in it's finest form.

As far as the difference between PC's/laptops/touchscreens/phones, and even Chromebooks and Mac's, they're all "Computers" using the same basic electronic tech, but with different operating systems (OS's) and graphical user interface's (GUI's). Different tools for different jobs. You can't run a native AutoCad application or 3DS Max etc. on a touch screen or a phone. (Yet lol) Just the same as you can't run some of the apps on a PC that you can on a phone or touch screen. Also, the difference between Mac and Windows is that the base Mac operating system (iOS) is closed architecture (Chromebooks too), whereas Windows (Win OS) is more open for customization through application programming interfaces (API's), so people can create their own programs more freely, like the Opensource community does so well. But that's also where the security differs. Having open architecture means more holes for the virus's to get in, but of course we all have tools and security patches for that.

I also quit recommending things to people, since that means I'm responsible every little thing that might go wrong with what ever it was I recommended.

At any rate, I hope that helps. Good luck in your search.

05-11-2020, 10:14 AM	#50 (permalink)
Plankton Just Keep Swimming... Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: See signature... Posts: 7,765	Spending $300 on a laptop, or even a tower isn't a good idea. You should wait until you can at least afford something in the $500+ range. Cheap computers/laptops will start out working normally (if at all, actually), but once you start browsing and loading it up with cookies/temp files you'll likely see performance drop significantly as your low-end system resources are depleted. Your experience will become 'click-and-wait' while it tries to catch up, and that can be frustrating at best, that is if it doesn't just lock up all together over time. What I did with my last laptop was to buy a gaming PC, then I maxed out the RAM. I paid $800 for a Dell G3 (on sale at the time) and then another $120 for 32 Gigabytes of RAM (Random Access Memory) and installed it myself. I paid under $1k for a $2k comparable laptop because tech companies and resellers know the ignorance of the average consumer. RAM is what your system needs in order to function properly, and the more of it, the better. It's system memory and different from the memory on a hard drive, which stores files. Once RAM gets used up, it's gone until you reboot. It's the same with on-board graphics memory, but that's another avenue all together and you won't need to worry about that unless you start gaming. Companies will put out low-cost products with low-end RAM and then jack up the price on units with basically the same specs but more RAM, and the markup for just having more RAM preinstalled is ridiculous. It's capitalism in it's finest form. As far as the difference between PC's/laptops/touchscreens/phones, and even Chromebooks and Mac's, they're all "Computers" using the same basic electronic tech, but with different operating systems (OS's) and graphical user interface's (GUI's). Different tools for different jobs. You can't run a native AutoCad application or 3DS Max etc. on a touch screen or a phone. (Yet lol) Just the same as you can't run some of the apps on a PC that you can on a phone or touch screen. Also, the difference between Mac and Windows is that the base Mac operating system (iOS) is closed architecture (Chromebooks too), whereas Windows (Win OS) is more open for customization through application programming interfaces (API's), so people can create their own programs more freely, like the Opensource community does so well. But that's also where the security differs. Having open architecture means more holes for the virus's to get in, but of course we all have tools and security patches for that. I also quit recommending things to people, since that means I'm responsible every little thing that might go wrong with what ever it was I recommended. At any rate, I hope that helps. Good luck in your search. __________________ See location...