[Discuss] My HP Pavilion's HD bit the dust and it is 13 years old, so instead of replacing the disk again, I would like a new laptop. But I would like to pay <$300. I do not expect the best or the biggest. I have been told that some computers do not l

[Eric Chadbourne]

Probably depends on the brand and the time.

My Macbook Air 2014 seems to be of very high build quality.  So does my almost 10 year old Thinkpad.  Nevertheless I recently set up a class with a bunch of new Lenovo laptops and was less then impressed with the cheap feeling hardware and and the bundled software was borderline malware.

I had a lower end HP laptop that if you picked it up via the front corner when it was open you could pop the fan out of place and it would make a horrible grinding noise.  I just gave the HP laptop away because it was so annoying.  On the other hand I’ve had HP devices that were just fine.

Not sure if anybody has mentioned this but for the OP's price range you may want to consider a chromebook.  You could install Gnu/Linux if desired.

Eric Chadbourne
Nonprofit-CRM.org

> On May 31, 2015, at 3:58 PM, Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> 
> Is it my imagination, or are 8 year old laptops much more physically
> robust than their modern counterparts? I have two laptops from 2006
> that are still humming along with Lubuntu, while most of my
> later-purchased laptops physically fell apart.
> 
> Of course, the later purchased ones were used by my kids. But the 2006
> ones were visibly built like tanks.
> 
> SteveT