Hello there Ozbargainers
You guys really helped me out last time and I thank you for your assistance, I am once again looking for a budget Laptop for my younger brother who is currently in High School. I'm looking for the best Laptop I can get for $250 - $350, I saw the HP G3 250 for $299 at the Australia Post but I thought I'd post here before just buying that straight away.
I'd prefer the Laptop to be available for pick up at my local JBHIFI,Dick Smith, The Good Guys, Big W, Target etc but I don't mind online deals.
Thank you
-Salabala
The HP 250 (G3) with Celeron N29xx processor is an OK machine. Not the best, as there are certainly other alternatives within the sub $350 budget.
If willing to buy online I recommend the Kogan Atlas X1510 which packs a higher tier, but also somewhat poky Celeron N3520 (quad core compared to dual core of HP 250). Other advantages include — a battery runtime of 9 hours and a lightweight build of 2.1KG, without an optical drive to weight it down.
The HP G3 on the other hand is reviewed to have a battery runtime of 6 hours. and looks to be slightly heavier.
However, for students who intend to take their laptops to school should ideally invest in a machine that's lighter than 2KG. As I used to take a 13" notebook to university everday, it's a great pain having a laptop in your backpack that's extremely thick and heavy. The high school that I used to work in also provided Dell Latitude ultrabooks for their kids (this was a private school though, so the kids get really expensive machines)
My recommendation is to get a netbook that is at least 11.6 inches in size.
Toshiba Satellite L10-B003 which is an 11.6" Celeron running 500GB of HDD and 2GB of RAM ($297 from BingLee)
or the Gigabyte Q21M running a quad core Celeron with 4GB of RAM / 500GB for $379 from MSY
And the venerable HP Stream 11 with Office 365 included, which sold for as little as $253 from JB Hifi.
and for the HDD just get yourself a WD Passport Ultra from OW
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/182053