My lass is after a laptop of sorts for Christmas, and budget is on the low side – 250 max.

Is it better to get a dinky little Chromebook type thing, or will the 8gb memory get in the way if she wants to do much more than browse the web and skype her mates?

Depends what the “much more” is.

I use my Chromebook for 99% of my home use. The other 1% is for Zwift/TrainerRoad.

I have 4x chromebooks, all 2gb and all run reasonably well. I have 4gb in my desktop chromebox, and my next chromebook will have 4gb. But there is no reason I can see for more.

There’s some pretty lightweight, cheap Windows pc now. Less than £200. You’ll be able to run all the chrome stuff should you want to plus all the usual Windows stuff.

Cheers. She was talking about using audio editing software – is there enough room to install much software, or can you install stuff on a USB stick on a chromebook? I guess I’m a bit ‘old guard’ in that I think anything with less than 500gb storage is tiny!

You can’t install Windows software on a Chromebook, just its own apps. That’s the point, it’s essentially a web browser.

You can’t install Windows software on a Chromebook, just its own apps. That’s the point, it’s essentially a web browser.

Although android apps are on the cards and some chromebooks already support this.

Office for android is perfectly serviceable and at that price point I think a windows machine would drive me mad. Pretty slow and limited storage once it’s loaded with windows software.

Ta all. So what would be the ideal spec at that price?

Just got the young lady one of these for Xmas. Win 7, but can still upgrade for free, 8gb RAM, i5 processor. No marks on it at all. £200