Laptop recommendations?

[dequire]

I haven't blown it out lately, but I take your point.

Feel free to blow the Windblows off of it as well, while you're at it

[jlittle]

... We're an HP free household for life after this experience.

Same here. Their consumer grade laptops have been appalling at times, leading to class action lawsuits. My respected computer salesman tried to persuade me that the business laptops were good, but if I get ripped off by a company, and it appears to be not an isolated case, I hold it against them.

John Little

[dibl]

I haven't blown it out lately, but I take your point.

[oshunluvr]

My wife is running Win 7 on a Dell E6500 today. But it runs hot -- too hot to sit on the lap uninsulated. I'm trading some consulting time for a newer used HP laptop, on which I'll install Win 10 for her. The old Dells are pretty long-lived.

Have you blown the dust out of it? My old giant HP laptop had huge dust-bunnies I had to clear out twice a year.

[dibl]

My wife is running Win 7 on a Dell E6500 today. But it runs hot -- too hot to sit on the lap uninsulated. I'm trading some consulting time for a newer used HP laptop, on which I'll install Win 10 for her. The old Dells are pretty long-lived.

[oshunluvr]

They're about $100-125 in good shape on Amazon and Ebay

[GreyGeek]

For fun, I dug out an old Dell my mom had forever that's been in a closet for 3 years. A Latitude D830 circa 2008 - core 2 duo, 80GB HDD. ....

That was the laptop I was using when I retired. It was docked to port to which was also connected a 21" external display, mouse, keyboard and networking. The laptop itself lay with the lid closed and the external display sitting on top, or just behind, I don't remember which. I had it set for dual booting with XP and ran mostly on my Mandriva 2008 (IIRCC) side.

Nice machine. Two years later, at the State Surplus Sale they were going for $125 @ with broken parts and $175-250 @ if they worked.

[Snowhog]

Has no appreciable battery life but still runs.

Should one be so inclined, you can obtain a replacement battery for this model for $24.95 at BatteriesFacotryOutletStore.com

[oshunluvr]

For fun, I dug out an old Dell my mom had forever that's been in a closet for 3 years. A Latitude D830 circa 2008 - core 2 duo, 80GB HDD. I removed all the bloat from XP, Gparted live shrink the partition, booted to Lubuntu Live USB and installed it to the free space. Grub found XP and Lubuntu booted up flawlessly. XP still boots too. Whole operation took less than 30 minutes excluding wait time for defrag to run after de-bloating the XP install. Seems to work just fine. I have an economically challenged friend that comes over when she needs internet so I'm going to hand it to her. Has no appreciable battery life but still runs. That was back when Dell made good machines.

[dibl]

Right, oshunluvr. @whatthefunk, it would be MOST interesting to see how a booted Live Linux distro runs on that HP, if you still have it. If it still freezes and crashes, then it is indeed a hardware problem. But if it miraculously runs trouble free with Linux -- well, there's your answer.

[oshunluvr]

Aren't video driver problems a software problem? Computers, like Air Conditioners, don't work well with Windows open...

[whatthefunk]

I think Ill pass on HP. My wife bought an HP about 6 months ago and its complete garbage. Constant video driver problems, crashes, freezes, unexpected shutdowns. We're an HP free household for life after this experience.

[dibl]

I have a high opinion of HP products, in general, and I have had no reason to regret buying this one a couple years ago:

System:    Host: hp-350g Kernel: 4.10.1-towo.1-siduction-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit)
          Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.8.4
          Distro: siduction 14.1.0 Indian Summer - kde - (201411230337)
Machine:   Device: laptop System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP 350 G1 v: 0992100000400010000634101
          Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 21B7 v: KBC Version 46.0B
          UEFI [Legacy]: Insyde v: F.12 date: 06/12/2014

[MoonRise]

I have not had issues with ASUS. My laptop listed below seems to run rather well.

[oshunluvr]

Seems so. They have 3-4 products. I agree the screen is small. Since you mentioned HDMI output I assumed you'd be using it attached to an external monitor part of the time. If you wanted a light weight unit it seems just right. They also offer a dock for 135 €