Mobile Computing deals

[pauli]

In this Mobile Computing Outpost thread: you post deals, coupons, bundles, and limited time offers you find on mobile computing gear. Please provide links whenever possible.

Examples of what counts: Laptops! Tablets! Cell phones! PDAs and pagers (what year is it?)! Phone cases! Laptop bags! Docks! Portable battery packs, I guess!

Examples of what probably goes elsewhere in the forum: Apps and other software!

Let's keep this thread easy to follow and use by keeping the chatter to a minimum. If there's a neat piece of gear on sale, post the deal here - but please, take discussion to another thread.

Now, I hear there's this "blackened fries day" coming up in a few weeks...

 

[Wrakkenruan]

Came looking for deals... ??? Hope it's okay to ask for advice on deals here.

Need a laptop for a small church - needs to be able to drive HDMI for a projector and be able to show Microsoft PowerPoint presentations (thinking there is a free reader available? Don't want to spend on Office). An optical drive would be good but probably not required (even though an upcoming event will be from a DVD, but I should be able to move the presentation with my home computer to an SD card). Budget is US$1500 tops, but I think about US$500-600 should cover it from what I've seen. (Church has an old HP laptop, but it takes up to 2 hours to get Windows update completed every few months when I dust it off and fire it up - and the battery is totally dead; it has to be on the power brick to function.)

 

[Paladin]

Came looking for deals... ??? Hope it's okay to ask for advice on deals here.

Need a laptop for a small church - needs to be able to drive HDMI for a projector and be able to show Microsoft PowerPoint presentations (thinking there is a free reader available? Don't want to spend on Office). An optical drive would be good but probably not required (even though an upcoming event will be from a DVD, but I should be able to move the presentation with my home computer to an SD card). Budget is US$1500 tops, but I think about US$500-600 should cover it from what I've seen. (Church has an old HP laptop, but it takes up to 2 hours to get Windows update completed every few months when I dust it off and fire it up - and the battery is totally dead; it has to be on the power brick to function.)

Literally anything will work. You'll have a near impossible time finding one with an optical drive in it still but you can get an external USB one if you really want. For the machine itself, anything will work for those needs. I would look for any local refurb/used computer stores. They should have something in the $200-300 range that will do just fine. Maybe even a pawn shop maybe. If that doesn't work out, Costco has laptops starting around $350 for a new HP that will do a fine job.

Alternately, that old PC you already have will probably be completely rejuvenated with a $30 SSD, maybe some RAM (another $30 or so maybe) and a new battery ($20-30 at most). The SSD will make the most difference. Should take the windows updates down to 10-30 minutes at most instead. The RAM will help as well if you have 4GB or less in it currently. So $100 max and some time to install the parts, or $300 or so for a new laptop. Whatever works better for you.

Even amazon has these dirt cheap machines: https://www.amazon.com/HP-Portable-Microsoft-Quad-Core-Processor/dp/B0CPGKT77T/
The UFS storage is a bit questionable but it should be good enough for very basic use. They even have sub-$200 machines but they use eMMC storage and a SD card add on so... slow. I would not go for those.

 

[Nevarre]

Whatever you decide, sooner is better than later. This time of year you're getting the back-to-school sales on laptops which also serve as a means to clear out old inventory before the new models launch before the holidays. Anything but the absolute cheapest possible option (there's always a sucker-model that's just awful) is more than sufficient.

Microsoft no longer provides a free PowerPoint viewer, leaving you to deal with other alternatives that may not render correctly or may be borderline (or actual) malware. There is a possible discount for non-profit licensing with Microsoft, plus you probably do want a full presentation software option on the display computer in case any emergency last-minute corrections.

Or build workflows around LibreOffice or slide decks in PDF format if you don't need animation, transitions, video etc.

Alternately if that area is big enough for a monitor, mouse and keyboard,, buy a mini-PC. That will save you $$ over a laptop and you don't need to worry about the battery dying.

 

[Wrakkenruan]

fwiw, ended up with this one: Dell Inspiron 15-3530. Will be working on setting it up tomorrow.