Solved! Good laptop around $300

Anddey

Commendable
Jul 10, 2016
9
0
1,510
Hello! I need to get a new laptop for my brother that is around $300 since his old one is too slow. He watches youtube and plays minecraft. The laptops i found are: http://www.microcenter.com/product/476554/Ideapad_V110-15ISK_156_Laptop_Computer_-_Black
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01K1IO3QW/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1491660669&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=laptop&dpPl=1&dpID=41HfDkXXyeL&ref=plSrch
http://www.microcenter.com/product/474105/Aspire_ES1-572-321G_156_Laptop_Computer_-_Midnight_Black

So which one of these should i get? The cheaper the better, and i think the lenovo is solid but i heard some people say it's slow? Is the 500gb hdd(enough for my brother) fast and reliable? Is the laptop reliable? I know the acer ones have kaby lake cpus that are like 6% faster and it has 1080p and a backlit keyboard but i really dont want to pay $100 more for them. If you have any other laptop suggestions, post it below!

Also, I'm not gonna build a pc for my brother because he doesn't need it and it's more expensive since i would need to get a monitor and keyboard.

And is microcenter legit? Their prices seems too good to be true! And i couldn't find the laptop model anywhere else!(could they be rip offs?) Are the stuff 100% new and not used?

Thanks for reading and replying! ;D


 
Solution
A SSD will make a laptop more responsive because it has much higher read / write speeds compared to a hard drive. However, it does not make a laptop more powerful.

If your brother wants better performance (higher frame rates) in Minecraft, then adding in a SSD into his current laptop will not do it. The SSD will allow the laptop to boot up / shutdown more quickly and also load Minecraft faster (assuming Windows is cloned to the SSD and Minecraft is installed on the SSD).

geofelt

Distinguished
5400rpm drives are built for battery savings and are abysmally slow.
I will not buy a laptop without a ssd.

What is the current laptop?


If you can replace the current hard drive with a ssd, the results are magical.
I have done this on every laptop I own.
Buy a Samsung ssd of sufficient capacity and use the free Samsung ssd migration app to copy the C drive to the ssd.

 

Rahul_153

Prominent
Mar 7, 2017
20
0
570
these two are the best ones under 300 https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Ideapad-110-i3-6100U-Memory/dp/B01MXEQQO6........ https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-i3-6100U-Windows-ES1-572-31KW/dp/B01J42JPL4.... but if you can pick up from store microcenter price is great
 

Anddey

Commendable
Jul 10, 2016
9
0
1,510
Okay thanks for the replies!
He has a dell insperion 3000 series with a i3 5005u, 6gb 1600mhz ddr3, and a 1 tb hhd.
So if i buy a new ssd and install it the laptop would be fast? Thanks!
 

USAFRet

Illustrious
Moderator


Assuming you put the OS and everything on the SSD, it will be faster.
 
A SSD will make a laptop more responsive because it has much higher read / write speeds compared to a hard drive. However, it does not make a laptop more powerful.

If your brother wants better performance (higher frame rates) in Minecraft, then adding in a SSD into his current laptop will not do it. The SSD will allow the laptop to boot up / shutdown more quickly and also load Minecraft faster (assuming Windows is cloned to the SSD and Minecraft is installed on the SSD).
 
Solution

Anddey

Commendable
Jul 10, 2016
9
0
1,510
Thanks for the replies! The laptop isnt really slow, it's just buggy. For example, when i open file explorer, it would take like 10 mins just to load a folder! And minecraft runs fine on it too...for like 3 mins. When i first launch minecraft, the game would run at like 200fps but after 3 mins, the fps just goes down to 20fps...and when i exit minecraft, the whole laptop would be laggy until i restart it or put it to sleep and wake it up. Browsing the internet and watching videos is fine but that's all it can do! Also, how do i reinstall windows on the ssd? I need to deactivate the windows key and then reactivate it on the new ssd but idk how! Thanks!
 

USAFRet

Illustrious
Moderator


That's a software issue, or maybe possibly a failing HDD.
I have an old Toshiba laptop. Celeron 2.2GHz, 2GB RAM, Win 10 Pro. 2009 era.
It is nowhere near that slow.

Possibly just a clean install of the OS would clear up a bunch of issues.