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Laptop advice

Garp

Garp

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My old (maybe 10 years old/more?) Asus laptop has finally given up the ghost. The battery went first a while back, and even with a replacement, it still failed to hold a charge and had to be plugged in constantly. Then it stopped connecting wirelessly, so had to be tethered to the router full-time. Now it just won't turn on. Farewell, good and faithful servant.

My daughter has a Chromebook given to her by her school. She'll be off to college in August and I don't think she wants it. I don't know much about Chromebooks and have never used hers so have a few quick questions from any available helpful posters.

Basically, I need for a laptop to connect to my WD My Cloud Home, and for it to be able to run a Plex server. I need to be able to access mini SD cards and I would prefer a DVD drive. I don't game online nor do anything else that requires super-fast speeds or amazing graphics.

To keep things cheap, I was wondering whether my best bet would be to buy her Chromecast and add an external SD reader (if it doesn't have one) and external DVD drive. If she's not willing to sell, would it still make more sense to get a low-end laptop and add these separately? Looks like DVD drives are rare on laptops these days.

We're currently doing up our house to sell it next year, so my budget is way low, as the laptop is low priority (I can live without it, I just don't want to). All-in would be about $300 tops. 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
 
Buy used. Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, Craigslist, Ebay. I have two 4th Gen i7 quad core laptops that combined are slightly more than your budget. If you are patient you can find a good computer for super cheap. A decent i5 laptop with a dvd drive can be had for under $200 easily. My advice, stay away from chromebooks.
 
DigModiFicaTion said:
My advice, stay away from chromebooks.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Even though I'm considering buying my daughter's old Chromebook, I hadn't thought about looking around for other 2nd hand stuff. Cheers.

BTW, why do suggest steering clear of Chromebooks?
 
Garp said:
BTW, why do suggest steering clear of Chromebooks?
Click to expand...

They're basically a large phone with arguably less power and usability. If everything you do is in the cloud you could get away with it. Processors are super slow stop no multitasking. If you've used an i3 laptop with a standard hd that's the speed you can expect, even with the chromebook ssd.
 
You'd be better off connecting yourself to the computer (using the usb slot of your choice) and doing the processing with your own brain.
 
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A little story about chromebook in college. All our class got them. Free. And no one have used them. Everybody had to but a personal one 
 
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