I am replacing my laptop after a good 7-8 years. I originally bought the laptop for Wife, when She was going to work in La Pryor, I wanted her to have a nice new computer capable of doing any modern day activity. If I remember correctly, it ran about $900, more or less. I figured that is what computers cost, that seemed like a nice round number. She was issued one at work, thus it became my home laptop. We have bought a few more computers since then. I am sure Boy got a last computer from us in the last 8 years and now Mijo just got a new one when he started college. There is a real difference between those two boys. Where Boy is a serious gamer and was constantly pushing for the latest and greatest possible laptop money would and could buy, Mijo just needs it to run the basic app to write papers, some day he might need a spreadsheet or two. Mijo never really became a gamer in the same sense. He will play online with his friends, but it is mostly the popular games that come out for Playstation or X-Box and he admits it's more to socialize with his friends than to save the world.
I believe his laptop cost us under $500, which was good because we were buying him a new fridge, microwave, and so much more stuff. I thought it might be a problem, we told him if it wasn't enough computer to let us know, we would buy him something better, but it has seemed to work out just fine. Yesterday, I ran into the same dilemma. I am not a gamer and only use my laptop to pay some bills, look at Youtube, and Twitter videos, and maybe write on my blog. We went to Best Buy yesterday and I looked at everything they had. I wanted a big screen, at least 16 inches, they go down to around 8 inches in some cases. I also wanted number pads to the right of the keyboard, not because I am that fast, but I am so used to having those number keypads there. My last thing I wanted as a superficial thing was for the keyboard to light up. I don't believe it does, and that is its only drawback to choosing this HP Chromebook, which cost a measly $379. It does have some shortcomings, like it only has one USB port which is owned by the mouse connector, and it does not have a disk drive, but I guess those have just about disappeared on all laptops. The battery is supposed to be good, lasting over 10 hours on a single charge. I'll have to make some concessions, such as learning to use their version of Excel, but that should be fine, I'm just keeping track of our bills that way.
There were still plenty of laptops above $2000, and have fun if you can afford them, but why? Aren't laptops almost disposable in this day and age? I'll be happy if this one gives me three good years. I loved the quickness of connecting to it. Once I turned it on, I connected via my Google account and the mail looks the same, Chrome is the same, all my pictures were already backed up on Google photos and even a lot of Mijo's videos from wrestling were in the video section. Youtube recognized me and opened with my type of videos that I normally watch, it was an easy transition. This was my first blog written on the new laptop and the only thing I wish was better is if the keyboard had some sort of light, in poor lighting, it is still hard to see which key is which, even if I can almost type with all 10 fingers.
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