A better made laptop for 100 Euros
A relative of ours who does not have much money, had an old computer. Then she had no more. It went kaboom. We thought to do a good deed an buy a laptop for her. A cheap one. So I found one on ebay, for 100 Euros. Second hand. Yeah, 100 Euros. Fujitsu Lifebook E734 i3-4a. 4GB of RAM, 320GB HDD. Intel Graphics card. From 2014.
It is a bit scratched on the top lid, but other than that looks really good. Top lid made out of some metal, same as the top part where the keyboard is:
So I want to say a few things. First, the build aspect of it impressed me!
It is meant to be repaired and upgraded, at least mostly. From the bottom you can easily access the Drive, RAM, and the DVDroom (whoever still uses those). Just 1 screw holding them in place. So easy to deal with those.
The best part:
You can take the dust filter out, no screws needed, from the back of the laptop. In a second. Clean it, and put it back. This is the best feature (hardware) wise that I’ve seen for a laptop so far. I need to open up my entire laptop to clean it once a month, else it starts to overheat and does not work well at all. Imagine if I could simply take the filter out and clean! How in the world are not all laptops equipped with this!?
I love that thing so much!
Now, when it came, only had 1 issue. When the fan kicked in, it made a very loud noise and made the laptop vibrate….was quite bad. The best part is that I managed to open it up in a few minutes by unscrewing just some 10 screws. It was very easy to open this laptop up and that I loved. I quickly accessed the fan and cleaned it inside. I had to add some special oil to make it run smoothly. This is a very old fan so this may happen. That fixed it.
I of course nuked Windows and installed TROMjaro. Everything worked!
Bluetooth, wifi, keyboard keys, function keys….all! Runs so smooth and fast. The processor is more than enough for most uses for most people. The RAM is fine, depends how many websites you have opened in tabbed windows, but you can cheaply and easily upgrade that.
Overall for 100 Euros you can get a great laptop second hand. Well built, not that bulky at all, and useful for most people.
I also love how easily I could switch the TROMjaro layout into a Windows-like, something this person may be more familiar with. Lovely!
Point is, we should re-use. Second, I have seen several laptops over these past decade and this one is the best designed so far in terms of how easy they made it to repair and upgrade. All laptops should be like that. This is 8 years old but looks 20 years ahead in terms of the thinking that went into designing it for repair and upgrade.
