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Considerations For Buying a New Laptop
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
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this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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Definitely look for a 2nd hand one, you'll have less issues.
Don't go toooo old as some had wifi issues back in the day (no / partial drivers)
There's a lot of refurbs by major brands (ie Dell) that are ex-corp lease models with some kind of warranty (which won't cover the battery) because of the Win10 purge.
I think the GPU is the main issue if you're wanting to play games... and as others have said, gimmicks like touchscreens and fingerprint readers can be hit & miss.
I've installed Mint on Lenovo, Dell and HP laptops with no major issues.
I'm a pretty big fan of Lenovo so far. My experience with their hardware has been pretty much complaint-free. It's what I'm using right now with Mint, as well. GPU is definitely part of my current issue, the other is RAM, and the last is SSD space.
GPU is just getting old, I certainly don't have the RAM I need, and I sprung for the 500gb model because at the time this was primarily a game dev machine that only ever played Kerbal Space Program, haha.