just need it for school so nothing fancy
Any older Thinkpad that’s about 5-7 years old on eBay. You can get units that were high end when they came out (normal speed now) for $200-300 all day.
I know specifically the P50’s have a thunderbolt port and you can get them with an i7 for around $250.
This guy computes
Dell Refurbished often sells refurbished business laptops for absurdly cheap with discount codes. The CPU is a bit older (8th/9th gen), but still very serviceable.
Here’s an 8th gen i5/16GB/256GB laptop with a touch screen for $320.
Are you saying you want it to charge with USB C, or it just has to have a USB C port?
Almost every laptop released recently has a USB C port so if that’s all it needs, you have tons of options
Many budget ones don’t charge with USB C tho
charge usb c
The last laptop I bought is a Dell Inspiron from 2013. I got it at a ReStore (Habitat for Humanity) thrift shop for $125 ~2 yrs ago. i5 processor; built like a tank. Had to replace wifi chip b/c original was very slow. Got that on ebay for $25 (pkg of 5, but that’s the only way they came). When W10 goes away, I’ll make it a chromebook, if I haven’t first figured out how to install Linux on it. If I need a usb c port, I’ll find an adapter, as that would put less strain on my budget.
Right now the best cheap laptop I know of with usb c charging etc is the t480 and t580. A refurb or renew with an i5 and 16gb ram is around 300 or less all day long. They are cheap to buy, cheap to fix, modify, or replace and will run great now and for years to come.
With the internal and external batteries, they can have 2 at once, they can run all day easily and then some.
Get the 1080 screen tho.
For $500 or less they can be had with i7 and bigger ram for more powerful duties.
They just don’t disappoint.
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You can get a cheap converter to USB C. If used doesn’t bother you, you could get something cheap on govdeals.
usb c for charging
Get yourself an old ThinkPad if you don’t care about speed.
Older, used computers will be slow, but if you know how to give em a good refresh, you can get em running well.
Install Linux
That was my intent, yeah. But not everyone has the knowledge on how to install Linux and may be intimidated by its reputation of not being user friendly - not everyone knows how user friendly it can be.
You don’t have to buy a computer so old that it requires a lightweight Linux distro. You can find quad-core i5s with 16GB of RAM for around $300. That will run Windows 11 just fine.
You can get a computer that good for that cheap nowadays? I must look in the wrong places for em…
Keep an eye out for Dell Refurbished to run one of their 50% off deals. Recently they had 9th-gen i5s with those specs in that price range, and they’re refurbished business laptops so generally higher build quality than consumer hardware.
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HP 840 G3 and G4. They’re pretty cheap refurbished on amazon and they’re very durable laptops. We used them for all of the remote workers during covid. And they have one USB-C port
Good call.
FWIW, We’ve been using HP EliteBooks for several years now. (Maybe 840s at one point).
Never had any issues with mine and performance has been decent. Can’t think of my coworkers ever complaining either.
I think that’s what I would get for a cheap laptop. I found out an apple MacBook charger (USB C) can power one of these. Kind of a nice fallback.
is that a charging port
Would you really suggest HP in general? Way too many horror stories about its scummy tactics around on many platforms.
I can’t speak for the whole company, but their older business laptops have been good in my experience. I’ve worked for an airline, and a logistics company, and in both they had HP contracts. I know that Dell laptops felt more brittle, I saw more of them come back brokwn. Also getting them refurbished doesn’t give them money, if you don’t want to do that.
It’s has a normal charging port that take the small blue HP charger, and it’s USBc port can also be used for charging. I recommend double checking the specs of whatever you’re buying just to make sure I’m not imagining it.
