How bad is the Cheapest Laptop

[@fyebil]

Dont let the schools see this Pinktop

[@G-t-m-gt]

Please

[@HodgePodgeProducts]

Too late, they just bought the entire stock and will use them for 15 years.

[@Reaperking66]

Still better than some computers schools have

[@kaito7132]

School laptops are slow as f

[@am37hy57live]

Ahahhahahah right? Thes buy a crap ton of them in a heartbeat and then blame the students when they can't do there school work 😔

[@terence77o7]

Imagine being the guys that engineered and built this thing and then you see your product on Linus Tech Tips

[@qwerdsffds]

big pink 10 inch laptop

[@dismiggo]

Personally, I would be honored. It's not their fault they had to design something so shitty

[@LestifyYT]

😹

[@b1bu]

it's funny to think that this is an actual possibility considering they post stuff on bilibili

[@syamkrisna]

still better than being a tech reviewer

[@ziguirayou]

For that price, the manufacturer did an amazing job with this laptop. Any engineer can appreciate that the complexity of creating low cost is usually higher than creating mid range, and sometimes even high end products.

[@StanleytheCat-v8z]

The art of cost reduction.

[@TheRenegade...]

Honestly, the problem isn't even the hardware, it's the overly-demanding software. I bet it'd run Windows XP really well (assuming you could make drivers work)

[@Nathan-zc4db]

This is honestly so much better than I expected. I don't care how bad the microphone/ webcam are, at this price point I'm amazed it has them!

[@defeqel6537]

I was thinking that too, but then I remembered that Raspberry Pi exists, and have to wonder if it wouldn't be better than this with Windows on ARM

[@wonderoushistoryofclassicf9193]

​@defeqel6537 not for 140 bucks it won't be.

[@miki890098]

I mean, 70$ phones have them too?

[@ERAM17]

Apparently YOU'RE the dev of this laptop, because, there's no way someone is defending this laptop HAHAHAHAHA. Now being serious, it's not that bad, but you can find better chromebooks for that price.

[@FooxTru]

@@ERAM17chromebooks suck

[@IrisCorven]

I love that Labs gets to write out a result as "piss poor". That's the level of clarity we deserve in every review.

[@harshnemesis]

Lmao and the way they rekt that camera quality. They took the racist "white bearded dudes all look same" argument.. and they said "yeah when you look through image quality like this, can't tell the difference xD" Btw that beard linus has makes him look so much better, keep rocking that look.

[@ivan3457]

It's funny, except that it's objectively wrong. 244 nits is pretty in line for a low cost monitor. Every brand-name entry level monitor is around 250 nits (Example: Philips 241V8L/00 = 250 nits, and it's a perfectly fine monitor). Even a gaming monitor like the LG UltraGear 27" QHD (27GR75Q) has barely 300 nits.

[@flubnub266]

@@ivan3457 The expectations are different for displays on portable electronics. Laptops and phones have to be baseline visible in broad daylight rather than just dimly lit indoor environments. Being able to see 244 nits clearly even in overcast weather is unlikely, and that's to say nothing of the contrast. Most portable devices have 500-nit displays or better. So "piss poor" is a pretty good way to put it.

[@RainesExtras]

My laptop which cost like 5 times that has a worse display other than the resolution... lol I measured my screen and it is around the same brightness, but the colour gamut is only 55% of sRGB, but the while balance is fine... Crazy to think that even the cheapest laptops with the cheapest of everything still includes a screen most big brand laptop manufacturers include with their budget 15 inch laptops

[@nilskirchhoff2790]

Now I want to see Linus upgrade that thing with additional ram, and a m.2 drive. The soldering alone is worth a video.

[@shaunweatherill6651]

I'd love to see if they get any noticeable improvements with an m.2 drive if the CPU can even allow such an increase of performance

[@reecefoust3867]

Agreed also I think if they put chrome os flex on it it would run well

[@CR0SBO]

Modern sleeper laptop

[@degtyarev708]

​@@t.n.-js6eiNo, but that's also exactly why I want to see it.

[@Silv3r.8901]

​@@t.n.-js6eifor the content

[@atlys258]

Gotta say, I always enjoy when these random super cheap products actually end up having some specs/stats that are surprisingly, and sometimes even shockingly better than expected.

[@Yipper64]

not that they can use them given the bottlenecks in other areas.

[@Revan058]

​@@Yipper64 Super true, but it *is* neat all the same.

[@GirlyMe-jm9mn]

i kind of love this og vibe to this video. the camera even put a little of the past in there and it felt nice and refreshing to see you guys smiling like that.

[@zorilla0]

79% sRGB is actually pretty impressive. A ton of Thinkpads and gaming laptops came with ~61% sRGB screens (if you even opted for IPS at all) and I still have an HP convertible laying around that retailed for $800 with the same amount of coverage.

[@LogicalError007]

They don't know what low budget looks like. The fact that they installed Chrome on it is just baffling. Firefox and Edge would have been much better.

[@BL-yj2wp]

To be fair, Lenovo laptops tend to have terrible screens for their respective prices.

[@robot_0121]

80% of the srgb comes from the diagonal. if it is small, then in most cases it will be excellent. from 14 inches and above - the spread in gammut is already higher.

[@MatherfuckingKing]

I think you might be confusing sRGB with NTSC or DCI-P3 or Adobe RGB, all of whom are noticeably wider colour gamuts. I don't think I found any lapotp or cheapest of monitors that had less then 90% sRGB in the last few years. Now, just because screen has hight sRGB value, doesn't mean it's correctly colour calibrated or that it can be, but that's a whole other problem...

[@zorilla0]

@@MatherfuckingKing The laptops in question advertised themselves as 45% NTSC in the spec sheet, which roughly translates to ~61-63% sRGB. Tech reviewers who did color measurements on similarly spec'ed laptops came up with similar results.

[@AttilaSVK]

I think for this price a refurbished laptop is a better choice. I bought my mom a Lenovo ThinkPad T480 for 170€, with an i5 8350U, 8GB of DDR4, 256GB NVMe SSD and a 14" Full HD display, and it came with a one year warranty as well.

[@Lucas_sGarage]

That's actually a huge value for the money

[@Pasi123]

That's a great price in Europe, normally T480's are around 300€ or more

[@coldfox7308]

Definitely, just bought a refurbished Elitebook for 300€ and it has a 8350U, 16gb of ram, 500gb m2 SSD and a touchscreen display with a 360° hinge

[@lasskinn474]

generally refurbs in european union sold by a corporation should actually come with a normal 2 year legal guarantee. differentiating them just from a regular 2nd hand piece, refurb doesn't otherwise really mean anything as a term.

[@sboinkthelegday3892]

Yeah, my thoguhts exactly. Seems really overpriced still. I guess a refurbised Chinkpad just sets the benchmark and absolutely any piece of trash refuses to go even a cent below that. But light is light, and pink is pink. I would buy three for $280 if I had any use for these, take it or leave it. I like my repair parts neatly bundled in their correct places, over a warranty and a bunch of time waiting for re-shipping.

[@davidg5898]

3:33 There are minor differences between TF and SD cards, but they are 100% compatible with each other. TF is used by manufacturers that don't want to pay licensing fees to the SD Association.

[@no1DdC]

That's why it's so common on Chinese devices.

[@GetOffMyPhoneGoogle]

Wait, how is it still patented? They have been around forever.

[@AraiDigital]

@@GetOffMyPhoneGoogleIt isn’t lol, they’re just either using old printing/ don’t realize that they’ve been off patent for a couple years. Likely just a habit of using TF and it being more commonly used in Asia

[@XxHitmanAssassinxX]

That makes so much sense.

[@davidg5898]

@@GetOffMyPhoneGoogle There are multiple patents, filed over the years as the technology improved. While the originals may be expired, not all are. Also, the various SD logos are trademarked so, even if/when all patents expire, the SD Assoc. would still be in control of what does and doesn't qualify as an SD card.

[@babybluesky9238]

I had one of these and it was amazing the difference putting Linux Mint onto it made - it is no way capable of video editing or anything heavy like that, but if you need something with a word processor and some browsing - this is alright for the money and I would recommend it.

[@mbarricelliwv]

I had one of these sorta laptops when I was just entering middle school (now out of highschool by a couple years), windows XP and by the time I got rid of it not even a factory reset could scrape all the malware and popups off of it. Played Minecraft at around 0-4fps and anything over 10fps was a moment of bliss, lived like that for all of middle school. Good times

[@Idiomatick]

Honestly, for a kid learning computing a lot of that is fine... you can do programming and retro games, etc on it. But i would classify it as more of a 'computer toy' then a computer.

[@tinytim0-014]

Dude we lived the same life, I did the same thing. Tried getting minecraft for free, didn't work *I was super young and dumb ik*. Got viruses, then BOUGHT it. Anyways it was not great, but damn those 10 frames was heaven.

[@tinytim0-014]

@Circuit_64 oof, felt that. Best advice would be looking on marketplace for cheap pc parts and building a budget one 😭

[@Yuriel1981]

I was in the same boat when I was a kid. (Couldn't even get a crapbook cause they really didn't exist back then) I had to buy my own first PC when I was a junior in HS. And it was still a potato. I have built PCs for most of the kids in my near and extended families now. But they all have phones that are more powerful than my first PC lol. I hope you have finally gotten a system for yourself that you are enjoying.

[@человек-и3б7ь]

​@@Idiomatickprogramming? On that old piece of hardware you can't run most of "IDEA'S" like jet brains Community idea, visual code would give up on that netbook.

[@plehis123]

Had one of these extra small laptops from Acer. Bought their cheapest one and swapped the HDD out for a SSD and it was surprisingly good. Really small and light so it and was just what I needed for university. It also had solid state cooling so no noise which is a big plus in a school setting and it was also powerful enough so I could do all my word, excel and also SPSS. Could also play some older titles like NFS:MW, CIV3 and even CIV4 and Hearthstone. It also held up quite well. Lived through 6 years of university and it's still working just fine. Keeping it as a spare emergency windows machine as I've moved on to Linux and MacOS.

[@dh2032]

SSD really that must difference, and is still using same SSD or has that been swapped or many times, over 6 years?

[@yan7911]

​@@dh2032a SSD makes a HUGE difference compared to a HDD, and you don't need to ever replace the SSD as long as it's working which should be at least a decade

[@irfanabdurrachman4906]

Same, I had an Acer ES1-131 which has Celeron N3050, 2gb ddr3l, and 500gb HDD. Swapped the HDD with a 240gb SSD and upgraded the ram to 4gb ddr3l, it helped me through my entire medical school, doing excel and SPSS, sure a bit slow but doable. I'm an MD now and using a much more capable Thinkpad :D

[@pesvids6673]

@@yan7911don’t they wear faster? Or is that nvme

[@PlatonicOwl941]

Same! I needed an Office Suite machine and it did that wonderfully for years.

[@RobertPendell]

EMMC storage is typically registered as SD in Windows so that's correct. I think you got it right for the memory.

[@bkucenski]

eMMC is barely functional but memory does seem to make a bigger difference in snappiness of the OS. nVME based SSD storage is making it's way into cheap computers now and it's much better.

[@mskiptr]

"embedded MultiMedia Card"

[@RogerioPereiradaSilva77]

@@bkucenski To be honest, eMMC is probably a better choice than a mechanical hard drive for these severely underpowered potatoes as they'll probably offer better speeds in comparison. But is good that eMMC is probably on its way out and mechanical hard drives are mostly a thing to have on a NAS now. Having had access to SSDs, even those cheap SATA ones with terrible read/write speeds, make it impossible to go back.

[@snowwsquire]

SD & eMMC are basically the same protocol, so typically SD controllers will also support eMMC

[@bkucenski]

@@RogerioPereiradaSilva77 emmc is literally as fast as a spinning hd.

[@Candice-p9r]

Whatever you're going through, don't give up.Because no persistence will ever be let down.

[@ansonx10]

The 2.8 GB thing also happens on 1st gen macbooks, which only had a 32 bit EFI or something like that. You could install 4 GB but 1.2 GB would be wasted. Better to just install 3 GB.

[@StaticVapour590]

Yeah it's EFI limitation I think

[@Megabean]

I'm pretty sure its just that the SOC's GPU takes a couple hundred megs of the ram. Same on the old Macbooks if I remember right.

[@D4rkk1ll3r97]

the 200 missing ones can be for the iGPU too

[@Wockes]

Had had an old amd where parts of the ram would be reserved for the integrated gpu. You could even set the size of it in BIOS

[@oienu]

@@Megabean was 144MB at my X3100 (the integrated intel at early 2008 macbook)

[@AJRestoration]

You should have stuck a m.2 in there and redo the operating system to tiny 10 see if that improved it. I would actually love to see that.

[@tournamentmaster2000]

Assuming that the m.2 slot is functional.

[@petyabubkin2800]

tiny 10 is a spyware, roll out some linux distro

[@ChrisBigBad]

100!

[@esuil]

Yeah, I was waiting for m.2 slot test, but it never came. Bummer.

[@KelBShobra]

I was hoping they would so badly

[@futurerealmstech]

I would be genuinely curious to see what LTT can achieve if they designed their own branded $200 laptop.

[@espeterson522]

Probably not much better. The price point is the bottleneck here. You simply can't get decent hardware for cheap enough.

[@francisjhunenicolas5938]

no, i bet they would have a hard time trying to find supplies from cheap chinese manufacturers

[@sreyash3997]

The screwdriver is 70$ alone, if they made a laptop it would be priced like a premium laptop.

[@shinmarcorp7846]

@@sreyash3997 In the words of Paris Hilton - STOP BEING POOR

[@zx-3948]

@@espeterson522 That, and that fact that a laptop as cheap as this (chromebook type of pricing, sub $400) simply isn't a worthwhile value for just about anything

[@unwanted107]

Used a similar product for four long years. Best thing I ever bought, so light. Enough to use office tools for my office work and watch some movies. It had 15"Fhd screen for less than the price of Kindle paperwhite.

[@gamingmarcus]

I bought a similar one (I think it was around 180$) when I started studying. I had a full blown PC at home, I just wanted to take basic comments during lectures or write a word document in the lab. Perfectly servicable for that. It also came with an additional M2 slot

[@mharris5047]

It would work for something to use LibreOffice to take notes during a university course lecture. At five hours battery life it would make it through two classes before needing a recharge. However, even the base HP laptop is infinitely better than the piece of ShenZhen (expletive) featured in this video and doesn't cost much more.

[@notme8232]

Mine ships in about a week, planning to install Arch on it because Windows sucks shit.

[@Adam-lk1vl]

Should've just bought an old laptop and helped prevent e waste

[@travisniebel7559]

@@Adam-lk1vl I have an old laptop that works. The battery is shot, to replace the battery would be unreasonable amount of money spent. You're probably right if there's a computer store or someone you know that has a laptop where the battery is not absolutely garbage. Is the battery was not not completely gone on the 10-year old laptop I have, I could probably use it for word or some basic processes that would be fantastic. If you know of how to replace or where to go for batteries on archaic unsupported laptops, that would be great to reduce e-waste.

[@kepstin]

I wouldn't be surprised if it actually did have a 4GB ram chip, and the 3GB visible in the OS was a combination of some of the ram being reserved for the integrated graphics, and some being unusable due to the limitations of the 32bit version of Windows that they're probably using to save disk space and reduce memory usage.

[@minmogrovingstrongandhealthy]

Yeah the OS itself is weird. But the inside too have oddball construction and choices, seems like surplus board intended for a more higher end device of storts, not even laptop but like a machine you hook up to a factory machine, if you know what I mean, or something similar, specific, so as parts that they collectively repurposed all this surplus parts for this just to "get rid of it". And what better then put together a laptop for small kids. It does video it does documents, you can run a presentation on it too, enough to use for school. Heck even high end systems struggle with Steam yet they forced it on this tiny thing, it obviously isn't build for that. However I wonder what hacks and upgrades can get and if it's worth it.

[@ddylan4cats]

I wonder how well it would run an older version of windows like Windows 7. It seems like at least 4GB of RAM is a must-have for Windows 10 unless you want to stay with a 32-bit system.

[@minmogrovingstrongandhealthy]

@@ddylan4cats Honestly we came to the point no matter what OS or crap you run when a stupid internet browser alone eats up RAM like crazy, I have 32 GB RAM and it's capping often at 95% and crashing. 5 years ago I had 8 GB RAM and it was ok. But yeah you can install W7 on this and run it offline for certain programs. But for online, I guess forget it. Maybe as an alternative Linux for online stuff since it's easier to make it user friendly. But every day is a big question, one day something works the next day they patch it and it's a brick ...

[@ziocrielo6148]

@@minmogrovingstrongandhealthy are you using chrome? I can have like 50 tabs open in Firefox and barely sip my 12 GB of ram, and i know opera-gx has ram usage limiters

[@MinePlays07]

@@minmogrovingstrongandhealthy 32gigs of ram and it's getting 95% usage and crashing? what the hell are you using? i got 16gigs, firefox with some hundred tabs open, steam, spotify, qbittorrent uploading 24/7, discord, whatsapp, AND a game running, altogether eating about 12,9 gigs of ram. u sure you don't have a cryptominer or something eating your resources?

[@LifeofaNigerianguy]

Finally, a budget gaming PC I can actually add to my collections.

[@AponTechy]

It's not a budget gaming pc

[@origamih4896]

​@@AponTechynot with that attitude

[@arkayngaming727]

@@AponTechy Anything's a dildo if you're brave enough

[@HenwiJDM]

@@arkayngaming727 yes even a USB cable

[@TsubasaAnimations]

​@@AponTechyyou can just download more RAM

[@patisaluzr]

8:22 my laptop has the same and it goes to 2.4Ghz, it's definitely slow on windows but installing Linux and it's much better

[@TamCennauldiz]

This looks suspiciously similar to the Evolve 3 Maestro I picked up at micro center for $33 complete in box. The bios on that laptop is by far the most open and scarily customizable bios I’ve ever seen on a laptop period

[@kingdom5500]

do you remember anything particularly interesting about the bios settings? :D

[@honer723]

That sounds like a good thing....until it isn't

[@honestmstk9790]

@@kingdom5500 explain pls

[@TamCennauldiz]

@@kingdom5500yeah. I could disable the thermal probe, give the igpu more vram, among other things

[@Mister-o6m]

This brings back memories of the performance of an Acer aspire z all in one "gaming" desktop that I bought from Walmart for $600 about 8 years back.. and they wouldn't take it back. That terrible PC experience is the reason why I learned so much about PC's. I got robbed of $600.. I don't think anyone would forget that.

[@bipbop3121]

I feel you. My cousin got robbed getting some cheap Walmart laptop. That thing has like a boot virus out of the box.

[@Gatorade69]

Yeah my stepdad bought some shitty HP laptop that also functions as a tablet in 2016. Windows can't even update because there's not enough space. Windows 10 literally takes up like 80% of the storage (which is eMMC). It struggles to play 1080p videos and I couldn't even get Terraria to run on it as it wouldn't even start. Trash straight out of the box. Can't believe they even sell crud like that and my stepdad being frugal fell right for it.

[@ZolidSnakeSS4]

​@Gatorade69 Have you tried installing windows tiny 10 or tiny 11?

[@Gatorade69]

@@ZolidSnakeSS4 Recently heard about it. It's my mom's laptop and where they moved to they don't even have internet anymore so it really doesn't even get used.

[@machonacho0075]

I remember saving up money for a year as a 12 year old , the exact same thing hallened to me lol

[@localzuk]

This reminds me of the terrible netbooks of the late 2000s, like the eeePC. They were slow and clunky, but they mostly worked. What was amazing at the time is that there were copy attempts that were considerably worse. A colleague at work bought one of them for their kid - turned out it was basically a re-housed WinCE industrial handheld, in a netbook case. It didn't even have enough power to open Facebook, the entire thing would just lock up.

[@tjparkour24]

I thought the same, had an eeePC when I was a kid, if I recall it was about 3x the cost of this and about the same performance, but it came with a linux distro stock that I believe was Tux, all I remember was it had a penguin game were you raced a penguin down a snowy mountain collecting magical floating fish, cause why the hell not? Haha

[@Leo-sd3jt]

The eeePC was not slow. It just shouldn't be running Windows. It flies when using Linux. I put xubuntu on mine and it's still usable though with the end of 32-bit support on most distros, it's coming to an end.

[@kaukospots]

That was just because they were the first gen of Atoms. They ran great if you didn't have Windows on them.

[@p3trichor862]

Boy oh boy. We had eeepc clones in Turkey that were given to middle-schoolers at that time. It was a cute device but with win xp it was so slow. I played original trackmania games a lot on that netbook. Once I tried to install wow into it and setup crashed the whole pc lmao.

[@aukondk]

I had a eeePC 701 with Ubuntu on it and it could run the compiz compositor complete with desktop cube and wobbly windows smoothly.

[@Maltrixgames]

this is the first video I'm watching from your channel and I guess your channel is kind of good

[@anderstermansen130]

uhm no its not??

[@laurensweyn]

I had a little Lenovo ideapad laptop thing pretty much at the same price point at university. Honestly, if you know what you're dealing with and you're tech literate enough to know how to keep your system running efficiently, you can do a LOT with minimal hardware. That thing ran IDEs, just about any 2D game, synced files with my desktop, watched KZbin, presented powerpoints, and you can basically double the storage with the MicroSD card slot, completely fanless and quiet and all while sipping battery and having a tiny form factor + tiny portable charger. My friends had bought beastly gaming laptops and not only could those things not last a single lecture on battery, they barely fit on the desk and would cook your hands if you tried using a mouse. I was actually better off throwing around my tiny lightweight piece of plastic at orders of magnitude less cost, lol

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

Yup agreed. But at this level, I would just consider buying a tablet like Galaxy Note or whatever...

[@laurensweyn]

@@fridaycaliforniaa236 Would probably work for many, but I needed to write and run code for many of my courses so that wouldn't have worked for me. I'm also not a fan of trying to be productive on clunky touch screen oriented software that tries to pretend there's no such thing a filesystem, and mobile games absolutely suck, but that's just personal preference I guess.

[@edyg5797]

@@fridaycaliforniaa236 a kindle fire with keyboard

[@eastfrisian_88]

My boyfriend's father had such a thing with an 11 inch screen and he didn't use it anymore because "too slow" - what he used to do with it (anyone could guess) ... the thing was full of viruses and malware and after I put a day's work into it, Windows 7 was reinstalled and ran incredibly fast. I got it as a gift and used it for university as well. Videos at 720p ran smoothly, was a great device.

[@zavaraninoveuhorky]

Same! I have some cheap 180€ Dell Lattitude with low power cpu and honestly - its like 2018 or 2017 laptop with like 80% healthy battery and when using school related executables or lightweight IDE (not JetBrains type of that are kinda battery consuming) it can actually last up to a whole day. 180€ laptop mind you!

[@gamingwithjason_]

12:41 "Window 10" in comic sans is crazy

[@NVidiero]

Widow 10

[@newspaperbin6763]

Window 10

[@skelebro9999]

Window 10 😂

[@GlueMonkey0_0]

Sans

[@AnonymousChannel512]

Pillow 10

[@hk07666]

It would be interesting to see a second video on how well this laptop runs loaded up with a lightweight Linux distro

[@SuperGabrielcrazy]

true

[@orngjce223]

Yeah, I'd shove a Puppy Linux on it and see what happens next

[@eaman11]

You probably can't surf the modern web anyway, you have to step into the light browsers realm.

[@tuckersguitarfiasco]

@@orngjce223 nope, straight arch.

[@MrNubshow]

It probably won't be that much different. I remember loading multiple lightweight linux distros on my Samsung 2008 netbook and it barely making much of a difference. Browsing is still horrendous.

[@BNWilliamGaming]

I got my Lenovo Thinkpad for only $25! It has some fan issues, but apart from that, it’s still my favorite PC and my daily driver!

[@NobleGrows]

I love how they make it so cheap but still print the quick start guide in color like damn they got thier priorities straight

[@yoyoprofessorxavier]

The main issue with these laptops is that they degrade somehow EXPONENTIALLY fast and basically become unusable after a short period of time of owning the device. I've seen too many of these in my families homes lol

[@wrongturnVfor]

By "short period of time", how fast exactly do you mean? A month, a year?

[@N-VAMusic]

​@wrongturnVfor my grandmother bought a cheapo laptop from some random site in like 2018. The thing felt like two crackers with a screen but it worked for basic tasks. Fast forward roughly 4 months the thing was having battery issues showing inconsistent battery readings and boot looping when plugged in. Idk how they do it but some manufacturers manage to make products that age like milk.

[@frostbite1991]

pretty much any netbook. Buddy of mine has one, it's all but useless now. Maybe Windows 10 v18 would work better, but 22H2 is far too resource heavy. We even tried wiping it and reinstalling windows, and it still struggles to open task manager.

[@tyler3201]

Working at Best Buy I sold toomany of these cheap pos to poor families that have a kid going to college. You’d be better of using the school computer in the library or you’ll be back next year for an actual laptop. What I tried to get you to do the first time. But no you just had to have the cheap $150 laptop for school.

[@elfedorausado]

Whereas I agree with your comment as a laptop user, netbooks of better quality (Acer Aspire One D250, to name a model I’m very familiar with, for example) are built to a comparatively high standard of quality, and it’s not uncommon to see them perfectly functional and being actively used in Venezuela, where I live. Most are running regular Windows 7 or some form of “lite” Windows variant like Tiny10.

[@kedrosal]

This may be outlandish but I think trying to upgrade this laptop as much as you could given its limitations would be a really cool idea. May be unreasonably hard to do though :(

[@drabberfrog]

What really can be upgraded though? The ram and storage is soldered to the motherboard, maybe you could try to put an m.2 drive in it but because the CPU is so slow it doesn't really even matter. I doubt you could even reach sequential speeds higher than cheap microSD cards because the CPU is so slow and because the EMMC storage is barely faster than a cheap micro SD card.

[@kedrosal]

@@drabberfrog Yeah you’re probably right, like I said if it’s unreasonably hard or pretty much impossible anyways then no point. Just a fun idea but I agree with you for sure!

[@yolocat-dev]

@@drabberfrog well if the cpu is a problem, just install a faster one

[@drabberfrog]

@@yolocat-dev The CPU is soldered to the motherboard, a new CPU would mean a new motherboard and by that point it's a new computer, ship of Theseus style.

[@Standoffmuffin]

Linux would be best lol

[@uppishcub1617]

I think a thick bezel is pretty reasonable on a laptop this size. Netbooks are meant to be carried around, which means they're gonna get dropped. That bezel makes it less likely that the lcd will break when it is inevitably dropped.

[@ιλι]

im buying a macbook today and I guess I gotta count it’s days

[@uppishcub1617]

@@ιλι anything Apple will break if you so much as look at it funny.

[@ιλι]

@@uppishcub1617 2016 was 7 years ago

[@uppishcub1617]

@@ιλι And it hasn't gotten any better. Everything else has just gotten worse.

[@ιλι]

@@uppishcub1617 nice bait imo

[@retropctech2407]

13:46 Thank you for mentioning PWM brightness control! Some people, like me, are extremely sensitive to PWM backlights and can even notice it with frequencies at like 2KHz. I hope when your LAB is done, you'll also test monitors, and screens in like laptops and tablets for PWM :)

[@redsnake9]

PWM testing in the lab is an absolute must!

[@realcartoongirl]

pwm more like epilepsy

[@one_step_sideways]

As if you would ever want to buy this?

[@Avendesora]

@@one_step_sideways Didn't make it all the way to the end of their comment, eh? I get ya, my atrention span ain't the best either.

[@insanestudios8018]

@@Avendesora shows

[@Keno_jm]

Honestly with older machines or very low spec machines, linux is definitely the way to go. If all you want to do is browse the web or do some terminal stuff, linux will give you just that and perform a lot better as well.

[@Max24871]

This is the perfect machine for the x86 version of Raspberry Pi OS

[@mh6276]

@@Max24871 AKA, Debian.

[@mh6276]

Linux is great when on a super slow old machine, or when you are on $100,000 hardware with a 128 core CPU and you just want things to work. Or, if you hate windows, you can just use Arch on your everyday PC.

[@Adept_Austin]

Awesome to see y'all shout out Flashpoint Infinity! I'm so happy for all those who worked on it. Truly an archiving achievement.

[@the_kombinator]

Yeah I can probably get Peasant's Quest working on it!

[@DarkMoe]

FP developer here =)

[@stevethepocket]

@@the_kombinator Pretty sure it runs fine with Ruffle at this point.

[@acronym.4328]

​@@DarkMoe Thank you for all your good work.

[@kiarasimone123]

Alex having no filter and not realizing he says out of pocket things sometimes is EVERYTHING 😂 Same Alex same

[@zoorenard1101]

I was looking youtube on how to (try to) fix my computer 2 days ago and YT just recommended me this. As an aspiring (french) writer, im actually really considering this pinktop. Thanks guys! You saved me months of pain waiting to afford a new laptop

[@KaiCross-l5i]

Hopefully you got a good keyboard and mouse if you are typing that much. 😂

[@agent-mo96]

At that price, you are better off buying a Chromebook or refurbished

[@SunbleachedAngel]

I hope you bought something used or refurbished instead

[@julianstanev3772]

8:36 The best explanation of the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle ever!

[@rudysal1429]

I think a really interesting video would be to show what you get at different price ranges for laptops. If you have to buy one for your kid, work, college, etc. 300-500, 800, 1200, etc. What you lose and gain at each point and what to look for. How much performance do you actually need and types of workloads.

[@SofiaVicares]

I dont mind the microphobe or camera. This is great for a worker or a student who needs a portable station on the go and does not use lots of programs but email, a word processor anda cloud storage system. If it supports bluetooth some headphones can be added.

[@caprature]

Windows 10 decrapifier script goes a long way on slow machines. Also h.264ify is great. There are also tdp unlocks for Apollo Lake to maintain higher clocks. It would be interesting if you guys could see how far you could push it. Low end hardware is always interesting as a 20% improvement goes farther than a high end machine.

[@minmogrovingstrongandhealthy]

This needs a follow up video, also if they can hack in some other devices inside too, expand upon it. Hope we get a follow up on this, or perhaps someone else covers it.

[@wocket42]

It seems to do vp9 in h/w, so "not yet av1" as an extension would work.

[@petersansgaming8783]

Another idea would be putting on a very light Linux distro with a very minimal GUI (maybe TinyWM, that window manager has a source code that consist of 50 lines, where 15 lines are just comments)

[@kolt9051]

Thanks for making me aware of that tool

[@MrVlodato]

Most likely there is a ram slot under the keyboard. It probably has 1gb soldered on where you seen it and a 2gb stick on the other side of the board. This is how any eeePC or Aspire1 was designed back in the days. I used to hackintosh them for friends, surprisingly run well on osX.

[@elfedorausado]

There were different Aspire One Ram configurations. The one I’m most familiar with, the D250, used removable RAM. The only other model I’ve ever had experience with had 512MB of soldered RAM AND a slot for a grand total of 1.5GB max….

[@cwhitley.sawlabs]

Given how thin it is, I think it has two soldered chips; a 1GB and a 2GB module.

[@caroxic-tokyo506]

@@cwhitley.sawlabs Probably more than two chips thow because RAM Modules almost always have more than one on them...

[@MrVlodato]

@@elfedorausado now that you say that you are probably correct. but i could have sworn i had a 2gb stick plus soldered on ram, maybe it was 1.5 max and im just mis remembering. it was quite a long time ago.

[@elfedorausado]

@@MrVlodato I was amazed myself. I flip cheap laptops, and funny enough netbooks are the ones that get sold the fastest (with the lowest ROI, though), and the latest netbook I flipped was that Acer with the 1.5Gb.. that’s how I was introduced to that model. It took me some time to figure out that the half gigabyte had to be soldered on the board

[@themattenthehat]

I think steam uses some pretty serious compression. My old FX-8350 used to bottleneck a gigabit connection, and even my current 5900X gets up to ~30% usage to keep up with a gigabit connection. Probably saves them a fortune on bandwidth pushing out all the updates.

[@jamesmnguyen]

Really shows you how far compression has come.

[@electrodeyt3491]

Not just that, also makes downloads faster for most people, especially those with not that fast internet connections

[@Glornak]

Depends on the game but I own several where the download size is about 70% of the final size. I imagine that even if I had gigabyte internet even my I9-13700 wouldn't be able to decompress fast enough to get anywhere close to utilizing all the bandwidth.

[@donotatme]

They should try using GOG instead of Steam games imo. Just have a thumb drive with the installers on it instead of having to set up steam every time

[@SuspiciousZorua]

I used to have this cheap (like $100) blue HP n it would always run out of storage but worked shockingly well. I say used cuz it's been passed down to my sister. Keyboard broke but other than that it's still kicking, 6ish years later 🙏🙏🔥

[@pair_of_fins]

If youre on a tight budget and need a laptop, 100% just buy a used thinkpad or other workstation laptop from about ~7-10 years ago. Performance is good for desktop, and acceptable for older games

[@naamadossantossilva4736]

It wouldn't even have a support downgrade,because the CPU is from 7 years ago.

[@David-nh7px]

@@naamadossantossilva4736 Windows 10 still has a few years of support left.

[@pair_of_fins]

@@David-nh7px He's talking about intel support, but yeah that too. Also, other versions of win10 are super far from losing support, IOT LTSC support doesn't end until 2032

[@kcazm]

we need more of this writer and editor working together. The style was great !

[@wubbsy]

I think it uses a similar mainboard to the cheap laptops a few years ago. But they had 4GB RAM, A m.2 sata slot and most of the time they had great 1080p IPS panels. Performance is really bad, but they where really great for Remote Desktop stuff. Great display, really light, ok battery life.

[@valerafox7795]

It actually should be mentioned Only LG manufactures IPS displays .(It’s their patent and only them are compliant for producing them) So there’s other types of display That are Not TN, but they’re not IPS - they’re IPS-like (wwa, ffs, dozens of other technologies.) So it may Vary a lot Even if it said “IPS”

[@Scnottaken]

I was able to get a tiny pc for about $100 with an N5105 that I run my media server off of. 8GB ram 256 SSD wasn't a bad deal. Slap a crap display and keyboard on that thing for $50 and I'm sure it'll be way better.

[@krotson6767]

Kiano 10 mini is a similar "laptop" It has an indestructible battery and cost as much as 4x a bag of grain :-)

[@cardwitch91]

Goodness! This takes me back - I had a “NetBook” back in the day for uni. 😮 It wasn’t hot pink though. Just boring ol’ black, but it had a cute pattern in the top.

[@meerkat5818]

I'm so glad you mentioned Flashpoint! I've been using it for a while already, but it's nice to see more people will learn about it through your video.

[@wyattf.3837]

Bro the BR1100CKA seems so much better than this and it's cheaper i bought it for $107 sooooooo good

[@slightlyevolved]

Can confirm, TransFlash was the OG name for MicroSD, before it became a part of the SD specification. One thing you *might* need to look out for is that TF *could* possibly reference only the OG SD spec, in other words, limited to 4GGB in size and not compatible with SDHC/SDXC, etc. Unlikely, but possible. Edit: Correction, SD was 2gb, not 4.

[@Liinuli.]

Isn't og sd limited to 2gb?

[@slightlyevolved]

@@Liinuli. Oops. You are correct. It is 2gb, not 4.

[@Gatorade69]

I hate Transflash. What's wrong with regular flash ? Why does it have to be trans ? Whoever named it is WOKE.

[@slightlyevolved]

@@Gatorade69 So there's actually a legit answer. It was originally T-flash, but T-Mobile sued, claiming they own T-. So they changed the name. Trans, for transforming, as it could adapt to the older Mini and full size SD formats.

[@Gatorade69]

@@slightlyevolved Haha. Well thanks for an actual answer I was just joking.

[@MikeWood]

A series on corporate refurbished older machine alternatives - such as ThinkPads and how they hold up in a price comparison /use would be interesting. I have a T540p from 10 years ago that came with a licensed Win10 install and later Linux that is more than acceptable and much better in all respects than the pink panther there. And not very much more expensive.

[@spunker88]

For $140 you can get much better bang for your buck buying something used. An old corporate laptop even one that is several years old will perform better than this, and you can update the RAM and install a new SSD in it.

[@Mr.Vertex]

I bought a laptop from the flee market that had a 7th gen i3 processor and 8 gigs of ram for about 10 bucks. I replaced the dying HHD with a SSD and put in a new battery and sold it for 130 dollars, which I thought was a lot until I saw this video. the i3 was actually pretty decent and it had a 15 inch touchscreen, so I would say for really low end laptops used is definitely better.

[@dogecode386]

I recently put together a 7300U Dell Latitude for about 150. Mind you that’s after upgrades, so it has a full 16GB of RAM, battery and a 1TB NVMe SSD for that price. And even being a dual core the CPU still wipes the floor with this thing. That approach will always beat buying a cheap laptop new by a long shot. Spend a little more and you could even get 4 cores with a 8th gen cpu.

[@Oleg-oe1rc]

I just purchased an E480 for $85 that completely blows that thing out of the water. Even being used it's got newer hardware and a significantly longer service life. Just got to be careful not to get one with CompuTrace enabled and make sure first thing you do is set to permanatly disabled.

[@peanuts.13]

similar to others, i picked up a refurb dell latitude 7390 with an i5-8350u for about $150. infinitely better experience than this bubble yum.

[@TheGreatSatan_]

The fact that he didn't drop it in the first few seconds of the video is amazing

[@stewartanderson6433]

I remember having an HP Stream laptop from this time with the Celeron N3060, and the most I could get it to do was the Rise Of The Tomb Raider benchmark at absolute minimum settings. So honestly, I'm not surprised when these little chips can do some insane stuff. They get a lot of crap but put them in the right system, and they may surprise you.

[@Blackoutkingbeats]

this chip can barely handle youtube

[@MelvinPollack]

I had a similar HP Stream, and on windows I could do absolutely nothing. It did make a decent system if you wiped it and put on linux.

[@NicholayN]

This is not an HP Stream laptop. It's a Chinese knockoff.

[@Blackoutkingbeats]

@@NicholayN I don't think he ever said that it was

[@JZL003]

Hah I had a similar one off amazon, bright blue. I was a CS major in college and did everything on it, put linux on it with a bare bones window manager I preferred anyway. Could open 500+ chrome tabs (with an extension) and controlled $100k super computer clusters using a $180 laptop, such fun If you just use it for writing, reading papers, email, and SSH'ing into other computers, you really don't need much.

[@presidentpoopypants1448]

Just curious, did the linux startup have the screen rotated 90' ? That's what happend when I put Mint linux on one I had.

[@nathanlamaire]

Putting Linux would make this computer genuinely usable.

[@nathanlamaire]

​@@presidentpoopypants1448sometimes it can happen if default orientation on its firmware is set to portrait (rotated) mode. Quite common on tablet hardware since it's expected to be used mostly like e-readers. Assuming that they reused tablet hardware to create cheap laptops would make absolute sense.

[@PatoQueGira]

True story I was the major

[@jt16omes]

You should do a video on best used/refurbished laptops under $50-100. Some used business laptops are really nice deals, especially compared to some new cheap laptops.

[@leon_technologies]

2:13 LOW TAPER FADE

[@mobamba4282]

@@leon_technologies lowwwwwwww taper fade

[@Jay999_W]

Hush up kid go play fortnite

[@Jay999_W]

@@mobamba4282Hush. Go hop on fortnite and rocket league kid

[@leon_technologies]

@@Jay999_W bro that was 1 month ago why mention it now and I actually play rdr2 fortnite is cheeks

[@EvanBoldt]

With an N3350, it’s almost even with a Pi4 in performance. You could throw out the display, camera, keyboard, trackpad, battery, and mouse and it would be cheaper than most Pi4 kits even pre shortage once you factor in the power supply and storage.

[@valerafox7795]

Bro This guy is Not what Pi made for😥😥

[@IndellableHatesHandles]

I don't know how useful it would be as a Pi replacement. What would you use as GPIO? Maybe there's an unused parallel output or something, but I wouldn't count on it.

[@tobiashegemann1811]

@@IndellableHatesHandles it has HDMI that means it has exposed I2C . You could connect an IO-expander for gpios.

[@Qrani]

That Celeron N3350 is a bit less performant than a Core 2 Duo T9900, the best Core 2 Duo made. You could make a laptop from 16 years ago outperform that thing.

[@IndellableHatesHandles]

@@tobiashegemann1811 I didn't know that. Good info

[@RetroRobotRadio]

I picked up a $60 Evolve 3 laptop not long ago and I'm quite happy. My computer was so badly out-of-date that this was a step up. The most intense thing I do want is simple CAD.

[@sarthak-ti]

I applaud you for continuing to use a literal potato through 2023

[@jakejakedowntwo6613]

A old thinkpad can handle cad

[@jothain]

@@jakejakedowntwo6613 That's very generic saying.

[@RetroRobotRadio]

​​​@@sarthak-tike I said my desktop was so old it was a step up. I am on a budget so $60 to upgrade was welcome. I am not playing video games. I use the web browser for mail, KZbin and TinkerCAD for my 3d design side gig. Bought a $5 carry case and a cheap mouse because I hate track pads. I grew up with a C64, tape drive, 300 baud modem and a black and white TV. Programming my own games in BASIC. So I am patient.

[@jakejakedowntwo6613]

@@jothain Even though its a generic saying, its cheap, plentiful, and not a Celeron.

[@RKight]

I'd be curious to see how this would do with a lightweight linux distro.

[@linuxman7777]

It could probably do Debian with XFCE pretty well. Even KDE if you really turn off any graphical bling. I have older machines that run it well.

[@drkujavec]

Maybe Arch/i3 is best here

[@psychopath_syd]

Not really confident about the eMMC storage but I'm still using pentium 2020m 4GB ram with Manjaro/Windows 10 dual boot :) got me through CS degree and currently dying (failing one after one hardware) ❤

[@klausstock8020]

@@psychopath_syd Yep, eMMC Lifespan is rated at 3000 Write/Erase Cycles. Now, wear levelling (if implemented, I seriously doubt that) might help a bit, but once you filled up most of the 32GB, there's not much left to do for the eMMC chip while still maintaining what little "performance" it has. Guess it would be smarter to install the OS on an external SD card, possibly a 128GB or 256GB "endurance" version. You can easily unplug the SD card and copy it to another one, for backups.

[@psychopath_syd]

@@klausstock8020 fortunately my fujitsu lh532 is SATA (currently using Samsung 860 Evo) but I'm curious, can these eMMC laptops boot from external SSD? Will that be faster than eMMC?

[@ohZyki]

Buying used is the best choice. I bought a Hp full aluminum 14inch laptop with i7 10th gen, 32gb ram for 190usd. it also came with a $50 HP g5 usb c dock.

[@zeenxdownz]

You got a pretty good deal

[@bartz0rt928]

The Hollow Knight thing is kind of a weird test if it doesn't even run Steam. GOG and Humble both allow you to download games through the browser, that should definitely work. Worst case, download onto another pc and transfer it with an SD card or USB stick. Did that for a while on library / school computers back in the day before we got broadband.

[@tjparkour24]

Man those were good times, I remember my school had blocked every gaming website under the sun so I downloaded full portable games from those websites that just had huge lists of free indie games that could run off a USB drive, and to my surprise they forgot to block student accounts running EXEs from removable drives, did that for years. I remember this awful GTA 3 clone called Crimelife, there were 3 versions and me and a bunch of friends had a laugh thinking we were so tough, playing what was almost GTA in school, hell yeah. XD

[@drabberfrog]

They probably assumed the computer will be able to run steam. They're probably not around garbage computers like this very often so being able to run steam was probably thought to be a foregone conclusion until it barely could.

[@john873]

not to mention choosing hollow knight to test on literally the cheapest laptop is just setting it up for failure. it's actually fairly graphic intensive.

[@LellePrinter82]

I think that this laptop with this spec works a bit better with Linux. Also would've loved to see if the m2 slot actually work. Put some isolation underneath first or doublesided tape.

[@BlessedDog]

It's really bad on linux too, I had this same laptop and linux doesn't even work OOTB you need a patched kernel

[@jaythejay10]

I used to have an Atom netbook that was basically unusable until I put a super lightweight openbox-based Linux distribution on it.

[@LellePrinter82]

@@BlessedDog yikes

[@jnharton]

@@jaythejay10A lot of early netbooks (can be Intel Atom-based) netbooks actually shipped with some version of Windows XP, which ran pretty well on a low spec machine. It was a reasonable choice when they were new.

[@jenrosejenrose7417]

@@jnharton I had one of those netbooks, an Acer, IIRC, and I LOVED that thing. I'd probably still use it if it hadn't fallen victim to a child's gymnastics.

[@rin-gy7kw]

This was the kind of laptop my nana got me when i was 5, i used it for watching youtubes and stuff for 6 years and i still have it in my closet. I am 14 rn and as i saw this vid i quicky had a flashback of the laptop i had. Sadly it is smashed bec i dropped the pack accidentally while i was moving houses, my nana is dead now but i am happy to see this bec this was kind of a nostalgic moment.

[@BernardoHenr919]

Oh thats sad

[@90sKidGamer]

Hey, linus pls if you need to talk to someone or just take a break pls do so you have accomplished so much already keep in mind that your a successful person with alot of money unlike myself and so many other ppl wont even come close to what you make. You have the money to give yourself some time away dont over work yourself this is just message from someone who cares about a persons well being i just notice the lil things

[@dcap1]

It would be great to see how upgradeable this laptop is. Like pushing it to its limit, what components can you get in there

[@Blackoutkingbeats]

its already at the limit man, did you see how much cpu youtube was using lol

[@klausstock8020]

I think it was pushing Linus to the limit already.

[@sturn4207]

I actually have something like this that I bought in 2020 for my kids for school. It was quickly replaced. I did keep it though, installed Lubuntu, and use it as a backup for basic functions

[@CAMintmier]

I'd like to see what this could do with a Linux based OS. Maybe have it as a little throwaway travel netbook, or even a Kali hack on the go device.

[@estanho]

Unless you use no graphical interface it would probably be just as awful, or even worse depending on driver availability.

[@MaxQ10001]

I think it might be much faster on a Linux distro ment for old hardware. Probably totally usable.

[@estanho]

@@MaxQ10001 If by "totally usable" you mean you'd be able to do stuff like open and use the file manager, play some OSS version of solitaire and read some small PDF files, then sure Anything remotely entertaining for today's standards, like watching videos on youtube above 720p, or productive like editing documents or studying would not be possible. Performance for decoding videos and browsing modern websites basically don't depend on the distro. You still need to use a modern browser and be able to run modern javascript, and for videos you need capable hardware for decoding.

[@Lanka0Kera]

@@estanho But the 720p youtube seemed to work fine'ish on Windows side? I thought Linux would be lighter on bg tasks, especially if you tune it to run only the absolutely necessary for the thing to work.

[@fredwupkensoppel8949]

I have a VivoBook which is basically the exact same machine, plus a USB 5 Gbit/s Type C port. It's totally usable with Linux Mint XFCE and at least on my machine, the wifi chipset supports both monitoring mode and packet injection.

[@independenthistory1621]

I have watched this video a few times but the contrast between my XPS 15 that just came in today makes it even better

[@JoeBob79569]

I picked up a Cello laptop on Amazon Warehouse a few months ago for €100 and it has been great. 11" N4020, 8GB, 128GB. And it has exactly the same port layout as this one. I have a gaming PC already, but I just wanted a crappy laptop for astrophotography, just something to stream the data from my scope to my PC inside the house, and it was perfect for it. I was getting 4-5 hours on a single charge, while also powering the camera on my scope and streaming to my desktop. The only issue I found was that the wifi/Bluetooth shared the same hub as one of the USB ports, so if you installed certain drivers you would lose wifi. The main reason I went with it was because buying a second hand laptop usually means that the battery is going to be half dead, and a new battery would be another €50.

[@senpos]

It would be fun to see if getting cheap SSD (for like $3 from AliExpress as well) and installing Chrome OS Flex improves anything! I did that to my old (~2012) laptop and it flies. Browsing the web is awesome, playing videos is awesome too, and it does not get hot compared to what it did on Windows 10. If only it had a better screen...

[@SofiaVicares]

I have an old laptop from 2010 gotta try this.

[@stangadoboaradreaptaomoara9567]

Out of all the good distros for a weak laptop you choose chrome os? Really?

[@senpos]

@@stangadoboaradreaptaomoara9567 Yes, it is amazing for low-end hardware and is actually usable for normal people, unlike most Linux distros crafted for such hardware.

[@alfiechia]

I think a linux distro is better for it than chrome os

[@Aero7_ssg]

ChromeOS flex is horrible. If you’re going to install a chromeos variant on a device at least make it MurkOS Flex

[@LimitGTX]

1:14 Linus learned to say closer instead of closlyer. Congratulations Linus

[@RayneAngelus]

My first netbook, my Newegg history says I bought in 2008, after seeing a classmate using one in college, and loving the idea. It had an Atom N270. Single core, no HT, 1.6 GHz, no boost. 1 GB DDR 2 533, 160 GB HDD, 8.9" screen, $400. My second I got about a year later. Same specs, but 10.1" screen, $350. 3 months after that I upgraded to a unit with an 11.6" screen, 2 GB DDR 2 667, Celeron SU2300 (1.2 GHz dual core, no HT, no boost), $465.

[@cwhitley.sawlabs]

First laptop ever was a netbook! Acer Aspire One, powered by an AMD C-60. 4GB of DDR3-10-66, a WD Caviar Blue 320GB HDD and a 11.6" HD+ display. I learned all about computers tinkering with that unit, from messing with Windows registry to learning that there was a piece of plastic between the thermal pad and SoC die. (What the heck, Acer.)

[@RayneAngelus]

@@cwhitley.sawlabs It was surprisingly effective and perfect for taking notes in class and light web browsing. It was *just* capable of streaming KZbin or Netflix, and could log in to EVE Online (though forget about undocking). At least until they overhauled the graphics code and no longer supported the onboard video = P Today, you can get full-size, economy home use laptops for

[@jonathannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn]

0:04 its all about personality

[@RonLaws]

A cheap laptop like this seems like a good candidate for a video on lightweight linux distros that are less taxing on the limited resources. Xubuntu, Mint XFCE edition, Puppy Linux and others come to mind as just a basic internet browsing appliance

[@matthias6933]

The Acer Aspire 5s with Ryzen CPUs are amazing entry level laptops. Have mine since three years and it's still working exceptionally well on ArchLinux. You can upgrade the second RAM slot and put in a second storage drive as well!

[@PCTutorialz]

yeah i have an old one with a 7200u and a 940mx, ryzen didn't exist yet and it was the only one with a gpu.

[@matthias6933]

@@PCTutorialz as long as it works well for you :)

[@jesusbarrera6916]

@@PCTutorialz I probably had the same model as my first own laptop, such an amazing entry for PC gaming at the time

[@YoutubePizzer]

i feel like the most impressive part is just getting this thing shipped that cheap that being said the “cheapest laptop” probably varies greatly depending on region

[@rangeldino2633]

That reminds me of the laptop I used in third semester of university for learning python. Got it used on ebay for 20 bucks, had to tape the metal front cause you got electrocuted by it, battery live was less then 15 minutes, but performancewise it was roundabout as fast as this one. Relatively speaking, I installed some lightweight linux distro on it, never would that thing been able to run Win 10 (or 7, back then).

[@WeirdTippy]

Since that netbook is practically landfill anyway, can we get a video with Emily using a linux distro? It would be cool to see how much (if any) difference it makes to performance

[@-average]

You can also optimize windows' theme further for more performance as well as using a policy and registry editor like O&O ShutUp10 to disable most of the background noise that uses CPU needlessly

[@Subh8081]

My travel machine which is a surface Pro 3 with i5-4300u suddenly seems state-of-the-art.

[@justdaddy]

@@Subh8081 to be fair, that was a much higher end device

[@atomicgearworks]

This is the same specs as the HP Stream my wife used for a couple of years. Pretty sure I got it for like $100. It was on clearance at Office Depot, plus had an employee discount. Still have it in the closet. Maybe I'll put a lightweight OS on it and let my toddler smash on the keys. Not sure what else it would be good for.

[@98SE]

Let your kid mess with an old version of Windows or maybe a Linux distro like Linux Mint XFCE or Debian

[@i_like_lemons]

Could be good for retro game emulation.

[@MadBiker-vj5qj]

At first sight, I thought this pink thing was a de-badged HP Stream. I've got a blue one, but the pink looks nice too.

[@Farquad76.547]

If my husband bought me a HP stream I would have him served.

[@atomicgearworks]

@@Farquad76.547 when your 6+ year old laptop from college gives out, and you're only making $10 an hour, you get what you can.

[@Airelon]

It might run better with Linux Mint. Wouldn't too bad of a machine for my cat. The bezel width would be great for adding a cat proof screen protector. My cat can hear the speakers just fine. I'm currently using a thin client for this use, but this is actually an upgrade. In saying all that not sure I would pay more than $35 lol.

[@futurememeudontgetyet1202]

Why does.. why does cat needs a laptop?

[@ezail9159]

@@futurememeudontgetyet1202 so it can watch cat videos?

[@nasonguy]

Just run puppy on it. It's scream with those specs.

[@tjparkour24]

Was going to comment something like this, the price is still insanely bad but running Win 10 on that thing is asking for failure. Throw a super lightweight linux distro with almost no overhead on it, and it'll probably run just fine for web browsing/video consumption. Still, just spend slightly more and get a product 10x better but this video felt wrong somehow, I guess the only people buying this probably haven't even heard of linux but it is really the best way to use hardware with specs this low.

[@little_fluffy_clouds]

How can the cat use this Pinkbook without opposable thumbs? Is the touchpad able to detect paw gestures?

[@tolekkeks]

This could be used nicely as a pfsense box / emulator/ Linux machine / seedbox. It is quite convenient to have the keyboard and screen already there + a back-up battery.

[@Neamow]

Considering just downloading something from a browser brought it down to its knees, I don't think it's capable of seeding a torrent. And for emulation literally the phone you already have right now would be 100x better.

[@jetcoughlogo5752]

too slow for emulating anything, well maybe dosbox and nes games. Also it struggled to download anything from steam - why would it be any better downloading stuff from torrents? also there's only one usb port with no sata/m2 port inside, kinda defeats the purpose of mobile seedbox

[@khhnator]

@@jetcoughlogo5752 no... you get accurate snes emulation with bsnes on a pentium 4. and even if bsnes won't work it will be able to run latest snes9x. seriously, there is no reason why this won't able to run up till dreamcast, save some terrible integrated gpu driver issues

[@benjib2691]

I wonder how it would work with something like windows 2000/XP as a retro-gaming PC. I think it can run some games like Age of Empires/II, Civilization III, Quake III, Worms Armageddon or the first Half-Life quite easily.

[@destiny_02]

i have almost exact same laptop as in video, and let me tell you it even struggles to run lightweight xfce. Mainly because EMMC storage is very slow. And installing linux was a pain in first place since the 32 bit UEFI was hard-coded to only boot windows, I had to manually adjust grub's efi files to Windows like efi folder hierarchy for it to boot. Keyboard is horrible, but atleast battery is pretty good about 8 hours.

[@alberte6109]

This video reminds me to be grateful for my first laptop in 2017 being a used Dell Latitude E6410, it was very useful. And I did realize that when my classmates got netbooks disguised as laptops as like a batch purchase facilitated by the school, so during class my laptop somehow demolished most of their laptops, and I did enjoy quite a few games, though at like 2022 I tried some games I used to play no longer work. Now, when I did first get it, the battery was bad, so I bought a replacement battery 70Wh, but even so the battery life wasn't that long (it could get to 5hrs if I lower the brightness, but it's not at a usable level) but in class I had to be plugged in anyway. Aand, I should've just upgraded to atleast a 512GB SSD instead of a 256GB ssd + 1TB SSHD, or just go for a 1TB SSD, but idk it doesn't quite matter right now.

[@Jdbye]

That SDXC icon seems to either be built into Windows, or built into some driver or something. I've seen it on my laptop as well, which is a Clevo at an entirely different price point.

[@TheExileFox]

It's a windows thing. I see it on a 1600 dollar Lenovo as well.

[@zushiba]

Please do a followup of the labs upgrading this laptop as much as possible. Put in an SSD, find another ram chip to solder in and maybe upgrade the CPU!

[@ProjectswAlex]

Ditto I want to see cheap laptop upgraded to the MAX

[@pp3v42_g3h]

The SSD upgrade is possible, the RAM and CPU isn't. Probably you can find RAM chips with higher density, but replacing them isn't enough, you have to write the SPD eeprom too and with unsupported chips you have to generate the content too to the jedec standard and also check the straps too. CPU upgrade is also hard, probably you can find a similar chip with the same BGA package and generation and microcode support, but CPUs are hard to solder and can be damaged way easier than RAM chips when soldering them without proper equipment and experience. I do these things all the time and it's fun, but waaay too much work and not worth it even for a video.

[@comosaycomosah]

Pretty sure as good as it gets is linux mint + micro SD + thumb drives lol

[@RandomGuy-om1vy]

Can'tupgrade RAM, EFI is 32-Bit. Could have overclocked a bit if it was an Atom. Don't know if its possible on these Celerons.

[@valerafox7795]

Not sure if the CPU got 64bit bus (Ye That was still the tricky time They could Pick it up with “amd64” compliance while it just going with emt64 and 32/48bit bus not allowing it to use more than 3gbs RAM. .

[@fhorst02]

We have a predecessor of this, $75 new. Now 4 years old and my kids still love to watch videos and KZbin. It doesn't do much else, for learning how to work with a laptop (especially a rough 6 yer old) it was the best purchase ever!!! Typing, paint, videos and learn how to work with a pad or mouse. Perfect. I never expected it ti last this long Thought it would die in a year.. Yet ... :-) If Linus spend a bit more time on alix, he probably would have found for $75-85 Including transport :-) Ours didn't not have the amazing mouse 😂

[@cvspvr]

your 4 year olds deserve better

[@ChakkyCharizard]

@@cvspvr Nah a four year old would destroy anything better instantly. Source: was destructive child

[@cvspvr]

@@ChakkyCharizard yeah, they'd destroy it out of the ungodly rage of having to use a $140 laptop. this is a fate worse than death. i wouldn't wish this upon my worst enemy

[@redacted8824]

@@cvspvr i used a computer similar to this (eeepc) as a kid and it helped me learn how computers worked. i still use one for my classes to this day, albeit not the same one.

[@marianokhatcherian]

Hey man loved the video! Spanish dub needs replacement though.

[@lautpuspa]

searching "desync" on comment finder gives only results from the past 6 hours, so yyeah youtube messed up the audio around 10:17 -probably after they used YT Studio to cut out the sudden LTTStore promo, which I assume after 5 days of upload they realized was dropping retention rate and not a great idea ironically dropping it even more if not ever fixed ツ

[@MrPete81]

I wonder how well this would perform under Linux instead of Windows. For a traveller that just needs to document/browse the web, this could be a useful device

[@Blackoutkingbeats]

Linux would deff work much better, and use way less resources

[@SomeOne-zr5wj]

If you have an old laptop like this, you can use it to host stuff. I have been using an Idepad Flex 10 (Intel Celeron N2807, twice as slow as N3350 in this laptop) to host my websites with ubuntu server. It runs like a champ, without GUI. Also sips power at like 4w, about as much as a Raspberry Pi lol.

[@valerafox7795]

W opinion🔥🔥✨

[@SreenikethanI]

well on the other hand, i tried a minecraft server on an old Atom CPU ... absolutely sucked at 150 mspt and didn't proceed further than that i dont recall whether ive put performance mods in it, probably will try it out one day

[@luheartswarm4573]

79% sRGB for regular usage and gaming is great! it's only a problem if you are a digital artist, but when that matters you probably have a higher tier monitor or a display tablet

[@Kasandra_]

PWM deserves it's own video or even an LTT lab test honestly. It's used in almost all phones, even more than they used to. There's a number of people suffering from PWM sensitivity who get nasty migraines from it, yours truly included - but phone designers literally do not care.

[@timmy7201]

PWM in itself isn't the issue! It's rather a to low PWM frequency, used in budget/low quality products, that causes headaches.

[@spdcrzy]

Fucking PWM, man. It gives me MASSIVE hadaches.

[@timmy7201]

@@spdcrzy As I said above, PWM in itself isn't the issue! It's rather a low PWM frequency that causes headaches, usually found in low budget garbage.... A simplified tier of PWM frequencies for LED drivers, would look something like: - High tier: 1 MHz to 2 MHz - Mid tier: 100 kHz to 200 kHz - Low tier: Less than 10 kHz - Ultra low tier: Less than 1kHz - Crime against humanity tier: 50 Hz to 60Hz , from the AC grid... Simple fix, stop buying garbage...

[@spdcrzy]

@@timmy7201 I know. I've had the unfortunate experience of both having dirty power AND having trash tier PWM show up in products I've used in the past. The combination of the two is truly horrific. That's what I meant by PWM giving me massive headaches lol.

[@Kasandra_]

@@timmy7201The phone that gave me the worst migraine of my life was S22 Ultra.

[@marcmowry1044]

You guys should pimp out this laptop and put the best upgrades possible to see how much it improves.

[@Noteclip]

The best upgrade they could do is throw it in a dumpster

[@USELESSDCK]

Based on what was shown, a better ssd and 3 gb of ram

[@pauloazuela8488]

​@@NoteclipBasically e waste.

[@pauloazuela8488]

​@@USELESSDCKAlso use windows 10 lite , not Linux since any casual people don't know Linux. Even I don't use Linux

[@phobicx5999]

Put puppy linux on it 😂

[@LTDusersince99]

The audio is out of sync!! The issue starts at 10:17

[@Jcf990]

So it’s basically a raspberry pie in a pink shell? Pretty bangin tbf 👌