ASUS E203 or HP Stream 11.6"

[Slarti]

Mrs S' very old (XP) Dell laptop appears to be getting terminally slow. I've done all of the usual cleaning up of temp files, removing unnecessary items from startup and run a defrag and it still runs like cold treacle, so we are looking at a cheap replacement.

After a wander round Currys/PC World she is favouring the 2 machines in the title which are priced the same.

As far as I can see their specs are pretty much the same, the only obvious difference being the Celeron N3350 processor in the Asus compared to a Celeron N3050 in the HP. And the case colour, the HP is blue compared to slate grey of the Asus.

She only uses it for email, web browsing, and looking at photos.


Has anybody got any experience of either of these cheap little machines?
Or relevant comments?

Cheers
Slarti

[Breelander]

Has anybody got any experience of either of these cheap little machines?
Or relevant comments?

No experience, but both are reviewed here...
https://www.windowscentral.com/best-cheap-laptops

The HP seems to score on having "... a trio of full-size USB ports, an SD card slot and an HDMI output..." where the Asus has just the one full sized usb and "...a microSD slot, HDMI out, USB-C ...". Bar that, they appear to be near-identical specs.

[stewamax]

She only uses it for email, web browsing, and looking at photos

For that type of usage, would she be better off instead with a tablet?

[Infrasonic]

All IMHO but here goes...

Try and avoid any of the 2GB RAM 32GB eMMC laptops if they come with W10.
Yes they'll work fine initially but the future proofing is pretty much non existent, so it won't be too long before you are back to the similar frustrations you have with the ancient XP laptop.

4GB RAM and 64GB storage would be my working minimum for W10, even for very basic use (and even if you use external USB flash drives for files/documents.)
You'll run into major update issues (not enough eMMC space for the 'old file' backup) and more than a couple of the larger apps open at the same time will max out 2GB these days.

There are a very few of the ultra cheap laptops that have user accessible empty M.2 slots, so you could put your own SSD in (much faster and bigger capacities than eMMC), which would make a significant difference. Generally at this level everything is soldered in, RAM, eMMC et al. So the user flexibility is minimal. You're stuck with what you get at purchase.

The other option would be to go the self installed Linux OS route, Thunderbird/Libre Office and a browser would give you a lot of options, even free MS Office Online (via the browser) if you needed it. You'd need to check out how locked down the BIOS/UEFI is though, some of the ultra budget stuff won't let you dual boot or install an alternative native OS.
2GB/32GB would be less of an issue with Linux, but I'd still go for 4GB/64GB really to avoid potential frustrations...

[Breelander]

You'll run into major update issues (not enough eMMC space for the 'old file' backup)...

There are procedures to get round that using a usb for external storage, but you'd have to do a manual upgrade using install media made using Microsoft's MCT to be offered those options.

If Windows 10 setup discovers you need more space, it will offer two options:
•Free up disk space using disk cleanup, which you can try: How to free up disk space in Windows
•Choose another drive or attach an external drive with 10.0 GB available

How to Install Windows 10 on Devices with Limited Space

A fiddly process and not always as easy as MS makes it out to be. Bigger is always better as far as drives are concerned.

[Devjon]

Had an Email from Lidl a couple of days ago, this convertible is on sale from Sunday:

https://www.lidl.co.uk/en/Non-Food-Offe ... leId=11479

Windows 10 home, detachable screen so you can use it as a tablet. Only 2GB ram but 64GB of storage
At £169 it might be worth a look

[Infrasonic]

You'll run into major update issues (not enough eMMC space for the 'old file' backup)...

There are procedures to get round that using a usb for external storage, but you'd have to do a manual upgrade using install media made using Microsoft's MCT to be offered those options.

If Windows 10 setup discovers you need more space, it will offer two options:
•Free up disk space using disk cleanup, which you can try: How to free up disk space in Windows
•Choose another drive or attach an external drive with 10.0 GB available

How to Install Windows 10 on Devices with Limited Space

A fiddly process and not always as easy as MS makes it out to be. Bigger is always better as far as drives are concerned.

There was a thread a while back about this with W10 tablets, Snorvey managed to get his updated eventually with an external USB drive and some cleaning up of the internal eMMC, but it was a bit of a palaver...viewtopic.php?f=39&t=9748

[doug2500]

As an Asus E200 owner I absolutely agree that there is not enough memory for it to run correctly.

I bought it for light, web based use and to start with it was fine. Then I thought it started to freeze up. It turns out that whenever it does an update it just can't do anything else. Windows updates can literally take all day.

Now it can't update at all as it does not have enough memory.

I wish I'd spent a bit more.

[kiloran]

I wonder if Windows 10 might be a bit OTT for the intended usage.

How about a Chromebook?

--kiloran

[Infrasonic]

Another option, depending on the specs of the Dell, would be to swap out the HDD for an SSD and put a lightweight Linux distro on it...

[Howard]

I wonder if Windows 10 might be a bit OTT for the intended usage.

How about a Chromebook?

--kiloran

I'd second that! My Acer chromebook is lightning fast and covers all the activities described. No worries about viruses etc and in the 4-5 years I've had it it hasn't slowed a bit.

My advice would be not to worry about an HD screen. My (non HD) chromebook produces an excellent picture on my new Samsung 32" TV when connected with an HDMI lead and is much better for viewing BBC iplayer, Prime etc than the TV's own internal system.

regards

Howard

[vrdiver]

No experience of the two machines in the title (sorry), I do agree that the 2GB / limited storage is an absolute system killer for W10.

You could try a complete re-install of W7, and maybe pick up some extra memory for it (I bought 2x2Gb DDR2 RAM for £10 delivered off of eBay a few weeks ago) assuming there's less in there currently. If you add in a 60Gb SSD (you can pick one up from Amazon for under £50) upgrading the current machine would cost about 1/3 of the price of the ASUS you mentioned, with more memory and storage space. It's an option if you can spare a few hours to fiddle about with the old machine. I assume you've also given the cooling fan a good clean? When they get choked with dust and other debris the machine will run hotter and sometimes misbehave/slow down...

I have an old Dell that got the above treatment (memory, SSD and good clean) and the difference was stunning. well worth the effort (provided that the rest of the machine is in reasonably good condition).

I also have a Chromebook and it's perfect for the sort of usage you described. I've downloaded the offline versions of Word and Excel, so can use them regardless of wifi (but be careful with Excel at least; my Chromebook struggles to open my financial spreadsheets, which are less than 2MB xlsm files). Battery life is also impressive (it's an Acer C720, a few years old now, so anything bought today should be better still).

When the Chromebook is connected via HDMI to my Dell U2415 desk monitor, resolution is the same as if the monitor was being fed from my Nvidia GTX980 graphics card on the main PC (but probably wouldn't cope with video quite as well ) However, photo viewing directly on the Chromebook is a bit disappointing as the screen is not particularly well calibrated out of the box. If that's important, take a few photos on a USB with you to look at in-store.

VRD

[Slarti]

She only uses it for email, web browsing, and looking at photos

For that type of usage, would she be better off instead with a tablet?

She hates touch screens and wants to be able to stand it on the table while using it. Hence the low end notebook.

Slarti

[Slarti]

Thanks for all the input.
We are most certainly not going the underspec'd notebook with Win10 route

Having run the Crucial checking tool on the machine, I think that I'll probably go for doubling memory to 2GB (the most it will take) and the smallest Crucial SSD and install a spare copy of Win7 that I have sitting about.

Then all I have to do is remember which are the 2 Win7 updates to apply manually so that it doesn't take fore ever to do the rest of the updates.


I suppose that it is worth the effort when the processor is just an AMD Sempron 3600+ 797MHz

Slarti

[Breelander]

Having run the Crucial checking tool on the machine, I think that I'll probably go for doubling memory to 2GB (the most it will take) and the smallest Crucial SSD and install a spare copy of Win7 that I have sitting about....

A wise decision. You should definitely not try Windows 10. I have run 10 on a number of low-spec machines. While the memory management in 10 is remarkably good and will comfortably run the less demanding 32-bit version in just 1GB (yes, I couldn't believe it either) your AMD Sempron 3600+ is the Achilles heel.

The two lowest spec machines I have tested 10 on are a 1GB machine with a dual core Celeron T3100 and a 2GB machine with an AMD V120. The Celeron ran at an acceptable speed, the AMD (despite having more RAM) felt too slow. The PassMark benchmarks show why, my AMD's benchmark is half that of the Celeron. Windows 7 ran fine on all machines, however.

Your AMD has an even lower benchmark than mine, I'm afraid to say. See this comparison of our three processors...
CPU Performance Comparison | Celeron Dual-Core T3100 @ 1.90GHz, AMD V120, Mobile AMD Sempron 3600+

Then all I have to do is remember which are the 2 Win7 updates to apply manually so that it doesn't take fore ever to do the rest of the updates.

The key one is the 'Convenience rollup update for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1', see here for full details...
viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1365

[Slarti]

The key one is the 'Convenience rollup update for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1', see here for full details...
viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1365

Thanks for that, I've now bookmarked it until I've done the deed.

Oh, and I've ordered the bits, but had to do it over the slow machine and boy did it take a long time!

Cheers
Slarti

[BobbyD]

You could try a complete re-install of W7

If it's getting binned anyway it would be silly not to. The difference between a virgin install and a cleaned up older install is often far greater than you would imagine, having become used to the slowing through unnoticeable increments over a period of years. Having said that XP does date it somewhat.

[Slarti]

You could try a complete re-install of W7

If it's getting binned anyway it would be silly not to. The difference between a virgin install and a cleaned up older install is often far greater than you would imagine, having become used to the slowing through unnoticeable increments over a period of years. Having said that XP does date it somewhat.

It wasn't Win7, it was XP!

Slarti

[Slarti]

Just realised that I never reported back on this.

Parts arrived
I opened the memory bay, removed the old stick and inserted the 2 new ones. Resealed the bay and rebooted. It worked fine and was a touch faster.

I then unscrewed the drive lock screws and slid it out of the side of the laptop.
Then I realised there was a step I hadn't thought of. Screwed onto the end of the drive was a small plastic plate that matches the rest of the case. Undo the 2 screws and attach it to the new SSD. Easy? Was it heck! It took me nearly 15 minutes to get the screws back in line with the mounting holes so that they would do up, while holding the plate in the correct position, because they were so small and fiddly. I was tempted to use a magnetic screwdriver, but though better of it. Eventually got it done and installed the new drive.

Booted the machine into BIOS and there was the new drive showing, good as gold.

Inserted the Win7 DVD and rebooted and away things went, much faster than doing an install to an HD.

The physical side of things took about 30 minutes and would have been quicker with a 3rd hand to hold the SSD.

The Win7 install took about 30 minutes and then the patches started. Oh boy there were a lot of them. Another day and a half, off and on with many re-boots.

But it is now again a usable machine and I have happy wife.


Thanks for the help and advice.
Slarti

[TedSwippet]

Undo the 2 screws and attach it to the new SSD. ... I was tempted to use a magnetic screwdriver, but thought better of it.

But surely you could have used one? SSD drives are not sensitive to magnets -- no moving parts.