this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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Asklemmy
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With the preface of "cheap", do not ever buy a laptop under $500. They are simply underspecced by the time they get that low, and will give a bad experience.
I would also recommend something like a Lenovo ThinkPad, they are pretty damn tough. Maybe a ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 Intel. Spec it out to 16gb of memory and even the i3 processor will get your job done fine in Linux, while landing in under $650. Plus they have removable M.2 SSD's that can be changed out for a higher capacity very easily, and much much cheaper than the $300 they charge to kit it with a 1tb drive...
To add to this, if $500 is actually your budget:
Get a good second hand laptop. I picked up a 2020 model X1 Carbon a few months ago for ๐ฆ๐บ$200 and paid another $90 for a new battery for it. Came to about $300 for a great little laptop.
This was for the kid to take to school, so I didn't want to be buying a $1,000 thing that he'd destroy.
My suggestion is to get a device that can do the stuff kids want, but just barely do the things they want.
I probably spent more time tinkering around the family computer than anything else as a kid just to get games way over-spec to run on it. Throughout that process I learned programming, hex editing, and some Linux system administration, which eventually led me to my current career.
These days, it's probably a lot easier to get started with a raspberry pi. But without something to motivate people to learn tech, why would they do it in the first place?