Hey folks, I’m in the market to upgrade my kids computing power during the summer. They use chrome books for school and all but I’d like to get them proper windows laptops to create their own apps and they’re ready to move past scratch.<p>Thanks in advance!
Best depends on your criteria, which you haven't listed other than app creation, but people have been making apps for a long time on computers of various capability, so that doesn't narrow us down very much.<p>Lowest cost option is find something used that works, or from CDW outlet or the occassional crazy deal. Many chromebooks can run windows if you use a 3rd party bios. The keyboard layout is a bit sparse, which means no windows key. Check Mr.Chromebox for models his script supports and you'll get a minimal machine that boots UEFI capable OSes, you might need a keyboard driver depending on specifics.<p>If you want the most processing power for the $, get a basic desktop with integrated graphics. Ryzen 5600<i>G</i> or something Alder Lake with DDR4-3600 or so (DDR5 might be faster, but right now it's pretty close and DDR4 is much less expensive). Alder Lake boards are either DDR4 or DDR5 but not both, shop carefully. Desktop chips are going to be significatly faster than laptop chips, because they can use way more power.
A used ThinkPad?<p>Otherwise, Wirecutter might be a good starting point: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-laptops-for-college-students/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-laptops-for-...</a><p>But do your due diligence with anything Wirecutter recommends and get "second opinions."<p>Also, check out Reddit and Hot Deals on Slickdeals.net.
Do yourself a favour and use this: <a href="https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/laptop/" rel="nofollow">https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/laptop/</a>
You can filter using many axes, like screen size, price, battery life, RAM, and so on... It'll give you a much better idea of what's available, rather than what's trendy.<p>Once you've selected a few promising ones you can check the reviews online.<p>On a side note, make sure you're not upgrading just for the sake of upgrading, most dev work has very low computing requirements. You could also buy second-hand and get something great for hundreds of dollar less than new. You can also buy new for considerably less than 1000$, especially in the U.S where prices are cheap. The laptop I bought back in college was 300$ and good enough to do any dev work I wanted (that's about the lower bound of what you can find brand new though).
What's the best option to get cheap 6-8gb laptops for practicing devops? Need to be able to install Ubuntu/Debian, Kubernetes, Airflow, etc. basically everything needed to mimic Composer (except for the GCP and BQ part)
I don't know why HN folks do not use or mention Asus much, but their mid to high range laptops are surprisingly good.<p>Try Asus TUF series.<p>I can vouch for them.
Windows? Ew.<p>I'm a professional dev and I learned on a Chromebook that I installed Linux on. You can get away with much less computing power if you use Linux.<p>I don't know any devs who use windows except those specifically developing for the windows ecosystem.
It really depends. Should it play games? If so, the MB Air is out of the windows. Then I’d try to look at something with a dedicated GPU or something Ryzen. If it should not, I‘d look at used Thinkpads for Windows/Linux or at the M1 for macOS. I think it also depends strongly on what should be developed on the device.