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Cheap laptop


St0rmSlaSh

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If you have access to a debit card and/or a PayPal account, I'd recommend getting a used ThinkPad off of eBay. You can probably get a relatively high-spec machine from around 2011-2012 for around $150.

Now if you're looking to buy new, or you just have access to cash, I'd go for an HP Stream or a Lenovo IdeaPad.

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I don't see why an Aspire wouldn't work. Though I am curious as to why you'd downgrade to Win7. Usually downgrade rights cost extra money, and Win 7, 8, and 8.1 all qualify for a free upgrade to Windows 10, which I have found to be extremely stable and easy to use.

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I'd go for the Stream. The Stream uses an Atom processor, whereas the Aspire uses a Celeron.

The Atom will have the same performance as the Celeron most likely, though will use less power- thus maximizing the battery life. It also has more cache on the CPU, so even though the clock speed is lower, you might actually get better performance.

I could run a quick comparison if you have particular models that you're looking to compare (like HP Steam 11 vs Aspire One Cloudbook)

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Would an iBook work?

I could probably dig one of my old ones out and *give* you an iBook.

 

But my answer is yes and no. Unfortunately, I am a PowerPC mac guy, so I really like to believe that those machines (G4, G5) are still capable for basic and not-so basic everyday tasks.

For running a text editor, no problem. You can run some older versions of Coda and Apple's XCode. And probably find old packages for IDEs and whatnot. Hell, ET would run alright too.

 

I've even cross-compiled Intel programs to run on the PPC processor. But that takes some serious knowledge about the UNIX kernel that's running behind the scenes.

Here's the major bottlenecks:

 

-Fastest CPU you can get in one of those is like 1.2 or 1.4GHz.

-The most RAM you can put in there is like 2GB.

-You are limited to IDE for your hard disk, so that will be, well... slow.

-Maximum wireless standard it can connect to is Wireless G afaik. (54 Mbps)

-Playing online videos and streaming music will be a burden to the machine.

-You will probably need to use a forked version of Mozilla Firefox, such as TenFourFox. TFF does not support plugins.

 

So really... I can't recommend it. I wish I could, but unless you have a knowledge beforehand that this is a platform that is no longer developed for, is unsecure, and a good 10 years behind where we are today, I'd strongly recommend against going for it.

 

I guess it depends on how much the iBook would cost. If it's cheap, I might say "get it anyways"- but I wouldn't use it as a daily driver by any means. I've tried. And failed. :(

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Oh.. Alright. I will just be saving up and getting a stream then! And one other thing, I really really want to make javascript games, I am looking up tutorials on youtube but they don't explain enough. Do you have any suggestions on any tutorials???

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