Budget for a teen's laptop

[Anonymous]

s
I have never needed to replace an SSD or battery in the life of any laptop in the past 20 years. No one I know has had to either.

That's nice. Your needs didn't change, and you gambled and won on hardware longevity. You also probably could have saved money by buying a minimal configuration and upgrading the RAM and/or storage yourself (this makes less sense now with inflated RAM and storage prices).

In any case, I think that most people who buy a $700+ device would be upset to find out that a $100 repair became a $500 repair because the manufacturer decided to solder a stick of RAM or SSD to the motherboard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can get a decent one for $200-$300 used, for example off Backmarket.

I found that AI was very useful for this, since it's a relatively well-defined market.

Tell the AI what you want and ask for suggestions. Then when you find a model, give the specs and ask if that fits the needs and is decently priced.

I tried this and got very useful feedback.

What I usually do is figure out the bare minimum of what I need in terms of specs and then go to the retailers' websites and use the search filter to see what the most affordable options are with those specs. For laptop I would include screen size. Another thing to take into account is things like how many USB ports. It can be really limiting if it's only 1.

It would be a good lesson to give DD a budget and have her do this and see what she comes up with. So if budget is $300 and she's ponying up the rest, she learns how to look for something affordable.

[Anonymous]

I don't get this budget crap. This is a requirement based decision not a cost decision. So look for what they need and how much that will cost you. None of these should be more than a few hundred dollars.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't get this budget crap. This is a requirement based decision not a cost decision. So look for what they need and how much that will cost you. None of these should be more than a few hundred dollars.

You work in the government don't you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

s
I have never needed to replace an SSD or battery in the life of any laptop in the past 20 years. No one I know has had to either.

That's nice. Your needs didn't change, and you gambled and won on hardware longevity. You also probably could have saved money by buying a minimal configuration and upgrading the RAM and/or storage yourself (this makes less sense now with inflated RAM and storage prices).

In any case, I think that most people who buy a $700+ device would be upset to find out that a $100 repair became a $500 repair because the manufacturer decided to solder a stick of RAM or SSD to the motherboard.

Modern hardware is pretty reliable. In order to make those parts serviceable, there is cost in terms of complexity, weight, and durability.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The budget is however much she has saved up to pay for it.

I sort of agree... but I'd say the budget is 2x what she saves for it. Parents provide for kids, but making kids have some skin in the game really changes how they treat their possessions. So when my daughter wanted a better grade of electronics-- first it was an iPad that wasn't a hand-me-down, and then it was a Macbook Air-- we had her save up half the cost. That was five and three years ago, respectively, and both are still pristine, because she has a personal connection to their value.

[Anonymous]

https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/apple-intelligence/articles/apple-doubled-macbook-neo-production-181821835.html

Multiple news reports say Apple has doubled production of the Macbook Neo. It also is driving very high conversion rates of (non-gamer) home users from Windows to MacOS.

For serious gamers, Mac is not the first choice platform, because many fewer games are available for MacOS than Windows.