On 14 November 2014 14:54, Daniel Wayne Armstrong <daniel@circuidipity.com> wrote:
On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 2:15 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh@mimosa.com> wrote:
One thought is a cheap throw-away notebook as a placeholder until something good comes along.
[...]
This generation of dirt-cheap Windows notebooks use eMMC SSDs: small, slow, and soldered in. The M.2 SSDs used in the Acer C720 Chromebook we have is much better: faster and replaceable (but smaller still). And the C720 has a Haswell-based Celeron. I discovered yesterday that it can even drive my UHD TV set (3840 x 2160 @ 30Hz).
Second the C720 Chromebook as a cheap and cheerful Linux laptop. I replaced Chrome OS with Lubuntu 14.04. My install notes (with Synaptic config):
http://www.circuidipity.com/c720-lubuntubook.html
Bit hard to find on sale (at a reasonable price) in Canada... though Newegg and Tigerdirect had some refurbished units on sale a few weeks back for $170CDN.
I was going to second the C720 comment, but I'm reduced to third because Daniel beat me to it. I have the same Chromebook he does (I think mine has a bigger SSD than his, but they're otherwise identical), and its been lovely. My experience with the Atoms has been that my 2010 Atom-based netbook makes my 2005 Pentium-M laptop look like an absolute speed demon. I really, really don't like the Atom. -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com