expiredDr.W posted Jul 10, 2024 02:05 AM
Item 1 of 2
Item 1 of 2
expiredDr.W posted Jul 10, 2024 02:05 AM
Lenovo IdeaPad 5i Chromebook (Cert. Refurb): 16" QHD+ 120Hz, i3-1215U, 8GB DDR4, 128GB eMMC, Chrome OS $202.39
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$330
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Edit: looks like that coupon code applies to any certified refurbished item. Time to go shopping.
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I picked up one of these fro the previous slickdeal for a few dollars less. It's a really nice device, but mine had an issue with the screen where moving or even touching the screen in certain spots would cause i to garble up and sometimes take 30 seconds to recover. I sent it back for a refund after having it for 5 days, when it came available again i bought another one. No problem with this one.
These higher end chromebooks, I think they even market this one as a gaming model, they are punching way above their price point in capability compared to windows or mac devices. If you're forced to use windows or a mac for some particular software like photoshop, my condolences, you're otherwise missing out here... This isn't just some cheap disposable thing you get for your kid instead of an ipad.
Lots of people buy a chromebook and just use it as a web browsing device, which is fine and really this is the ideal type of device for that. Spending a thousand bucks on a Facebook terminal sounds like a mistake... And you won't end up spending hours waiting for windows update to finish so you can actually use your computer, you won't worry about "which of these download links is the file I want and which is a virus" any more, etc.. and really with this big bright high res screen its a joy to use for that purpose. But it doesn't end there.
Android app support is really nice to have, and this laptop has enough juice to run them without impacting what you're doing otherwise. I didn't try any games but the few apps I did install worked great, even my vpn client.
The real power here is installing the Linux support. Having this comparatively large storage vs non-Plus chromebook models is a game changer for me. On those devices you'd often end up using an SD card for your linux data, and you wouldn't have enough RAM to run much anyway. But not the case there. I've still got the chrome browser running and that part is great.. But I've also got Firefox, Brave, Sylpheed email, a great terminal emulator with tabs, VS Code with Copilot, its a full linux desktop minus the desktop environment. I can run my docker/podman container workloads, and the default Linux install is based on Debian so it matches my other systems. As a developer, I've got all the tools I use for my job.
My wife (who has used chromebooks exclusively for more than a decade and has a 14 inch Acer with a Ryzen cpu we picked up on a slickdeal last fall for about $300) really likes the RGB keyboard. I like that it is backlit but the colors aren't interesting to me. The sound was what you'd expect, good enough for watching youtube videos but it's a laptop and the speakers are tiny. Bluetooth is pretty painless on chromeos and it has a headphone jack which I was happy about as I do some music production and use real headphones.
A lot of people look at these as if they're toys, which is too bad. For $200 or less it's a no brainer.
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5i model that has i3 CPU.
I picked up one of these fro the previous slickdeal for a few dollars less. It's a really nice device, but mine had an issue with the screen where moving or even touching the screen in certain spots would cause i to garble up and sometimes take 30 seconds to recover. I sent it back for a refund after having it for 5 days, when it came available again i bought another one. No problem with this one.
These higher end chromebooks, I think they even market this one as a gaming model, they are punching way above their price point in capability compared to windows or mac devices. If you're forced to use windows or a mac for some particular software like photoshop, my condolences, you're otherwise missing out here... This isn't just some cheap disposable thing you get for your kid instead of an ipad.
Lots of people buy a chromebook and just use it as a web browsing device, which is fine and really this is the ideal type of device for that. Spending a thousand bucks on a Facebook terminal sounds like a mistake... And you won't end up spending hours waiting for windows update to finish so you can actually use your computer, you won't worry about "which of these download links is the file I want and which is a virus" any more, etc.. and really with this big bright high res screen its a joy to use for that purpose. But it doesn't end there.
Android app support is really nice to have, and this laptop has enough juice to run them without impacting what you're doing otherwise. I didn't try any games but the few apps I did install worked great, even my vpn client.
The real power here is installing the Linux support. Having this comparatively large storage vs non-Plus chromebook models is a game changer for me. On those devices you'd often end up using an SD card for your linux data, and you wouldn't have enough RAM to run much anyway. But not the case there. I've still got the chrome browser running and that part is great.. But I've also got Firefox, Brave, Sylpheed email, a great terminal emulator with tabs, VS Code with Copilot, its a full linux desktop minus the desktop environment. I can run my docker/podman container workloads, and the default Linux install is based on Debian so it matches my other systems. As a developer, I've got all the tools I use for my job.
My wife (who has used chromebooks exclusively for more than a decade and has a 14 inch Acer with a Ryzen cpu we picked up on a slickdeal last fall for about $300) really likes the RGB keyboard. I like that it is backlit but the colors aren't interesting to me. The sound was what you'd expect, good enough for watching youtube videos but it's a laptop and the speakers are tiny. Bluetooth is pretty painless on chromeos and it has a headphone jack which I was happy about as I do some music production and use real headphones.
A lot of people look at these as if they're toys, which is too bad. For $200 or less it's a no brainer.
So I guess it's more about the use case. I also feel like the emmc storage kind of holds this machine back. Is there support for nvme?
I also hear that Chrome OS computers have a lockdown bootloader. meaning it's harder to get things like Arch Linux or Ubuntu if you wanted to clean install. I kind of want to get this just for the screen but I feel like in a non-windows environment I won't be able to take advantage of the QHD resolution or the 120 hertz display
So I guess it's more about the use case. I also feel like the emmc storage kind of holds this machine back. Is there support for nvme?
I also hear that Chrome OS computers have a lockdown bootloader. meaning it's harder to get things like Arch Linux or Ubuntu if you wanted to clean install. I kind of want to get this just for the screen but I feel like in a non-windows environment I won't be able to take advantage of the QHD resolution or the 120 hertz display
Chromeos devices have unlockable bootloaders if you decide to go to pure linux. There's a few steps to do it but its not hard. As far as the EMMC goes, its pretty fast as it is. I haven't taken the back off to see what expansion might be available, although at some point I'm likely to do so.
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