Interesting Laptop

[GeoffF100]

I found this:

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/hp-pa ... 50843.html

Great hardware spec for £229. N200, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 14" IPS screen, finger print reader. Why is it so cheap? Windows 11 S. It might be useful as a device for just accessing financial accounts. That should be pretty secure. Could I install Linux on it, I wonder?

[GeoffF100]

It is possible to turn off S mode, if you want:

https://www.lifewire.com/windows-11-s-mode-7151681

The laptop looks a bargain.

[jaizan]

Why is it so cheap? Windows 11 S. It might be useful as a device for just accessing financial accounts. That should be pretty secure. Could I install Linux on it, I wonder?

1 Every time I've bought a cheap netbook or a cheap tablet, it's OK for about 18 months, then all the software "updates" result in it being excruciatingly slow.
When I spend double the money, not only is it faster when new, but I can use the product for many years before it becomes unbearably slow.

2 I'm fairly sure you can install Linux on any Intel based PC. The one thing I can't quite get my head around is the security of all these Linux distros. There must be dozens of them & how do I know the OS is reliable & not created by some organisation with bad intentions ? I think I would stick with one of the main distros, like Ubuntu.

[MuddyBoots]

I bought a new Chromebook laptop from Currys a few months ago for £199 with a similar spec (Lenovo 8/128 GB memory and 15.6" screen) although not a touchscreen - those are more pricey. The Chromebook OS is based on Linux, or is quite similar afaik (sorry that's not my expertise so can't be certain). So my guess is that around the £200 ballpark is the market rate for the cheaper end of the laptop market, and microsoft is trying to compete against other makes like Chromebooks.

The slow-going issue with Windows laptops is what persuaded me to give up on it and change to Chromebook about 5 years ago and I've not looked back because I don't need any specialised software that I'd need a Windows machine for. I think in the meantime Microsoft has created a windows lite OS to compete in the market. I'm not trying to change anyone else's mind and if you want Windows I can't advise on all the pros and cons. But my 5 year old Chromebook still works perfectly well, although they do have a shelf life because they depend on the software updates which finish at a certain date - there's a website somewhere to check how long they will last.

[Infrasonic]

1 Every time I've bought a cheap netbook or a cheap tablet, it's OK for about 18 months, then all the software "updates" result in it being excruciatingly slow.
When I spend double the money, not only is it faster when new, but I can use the product for many years before it becomes unbearably slow.
...

Agreed - It's a false economy. I recently power washed (hard factory reset) a 5 year old Lenovo Chromebook, N4000, 4GB RAM and 64GB eMMC.
As soon as I started to reload accounts and apps it started to slow down again.

Conversely I recently bought two high end 2 in 1 laptops (360 touchscreen with pens) - an Acer Spin 714 Chromebook, 13th gen i5, 8GB Ram, 512GB SSD, TB/USB4 ports/HDMI. Absolutely flies, no lag even with Linux and Android VM's in use. No fan noise even under load.

W11 Lenovo Yoga 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1360P 2.20 GHz /16GB RAM/1TB NVME SSD/4K screen/TB/USB4 ports/Biometrics FR+ fingerprint. Only downside with this one is the fans can ramp up to a distracting level noise wise with the CPU having so many cores and it doesn't last long on battery with the screen, otherwise fantastic. I run it in eco mode mostly which keeps the fan noise down and eeks out more battery life.

[GeoffF100]

The N200 is a quad core processor with a PassMark score of 5165:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cp ... 00&id=5178

That is faster than my old i5 4460, which is still my main machine running Linux, and was fast with Windows 10. 8GB should be plenty to run Windows. Windows 11 S is a cut down and locked down version to compete with Chromebooks. I could not find a Chromebook with a spec like that for anything like the price. I cannot see a catch.

I am sure that the laptop is capable of running Linux. My only concern there is that it could have a locked own BIOS that prevents third party OSs being installed. Nonetheless, at that price, it would be useful for keeping locked away and just using to access my financial accounts. The less you do on a computer the less the chance of getting a nasty.

[Infrasonic]

My W10 desktop is a 4460 i5 - it has slowed significantly in the last year or so ( as well as crashing due to what I think is a PSU issue- posted about it on here). It has 16GB of RAM and even when I've deliberately pushed it with a ton of Chrome browser tabs open I've never really seen it get above about 11GB of use.

The new W11/WSL2 Ubuntu laptop has 16GB of RAM and seems very keen to use as much as possible of it at all times. Post boot with nothing open it sits at around 10GB, start using apps and multi tasking and it will go to 15GB quite happily.

The Chromebook is also using most of its 8GB allocation. So clearly more modern OS' + hardware will utilise as much RAM as possible to keep the operational speed up - which makes perfect sense.

I regret not getting 32GB in the Windows 11 laptop now knowing this - as I do like to multitask.

Locked down bootloaders are something to watch out for with some of the cheap no name far east products - putting Linux on them or reinstalling fully licensed Windows could prove to be difficult/impossible. Caveat emptor...

[GeoffF100]

Linux will use as much RAM as it can for cache and buffers, but that RAM can be reclaimed. See the amusing "Linux ate my RAM!":

https://www.linuxatemyram.com/

I installed W10 on machine with a processor half as fast as the i5 4460 and with 4 GB RAM. It was quick enough to look at my email, but not if Windows Update was running. It is fine with Linux, so I put Linux on it and gave it to a friend.

It is interesting that your W10 desktop has slowed down in the last year. I expect that is is still quick enough to log into a bank account and download a statement, but there is not going to have much future proofing. My alternative is buying nothing. I do not want to pay £500 for a toy, with a bit of paranoia as an excuse.

The laptop in question is an HP Pavilion, so there should not be any serious problems. The reviews say that the fan is noisy, but that should not matter for an occasional use machine.

[Infrasonic]

Something I saw the other week to do with slowing hardware which I wasn't previously aware of - SSD's need to be fettled every now and again as they do slow with age. I think it was Security Now that highlighted it and provided the solution - it was a significant % improvement worth doing. If I can track it down I'll post it.

* It wasn't optimisation /TRIM or anything like that - that gets done automatically. This was something else...

[GeoffF100]

I think the bottom line here is that the laptop is not worth buying for me. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see that hardware spec available at that price.