Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
I wanted something small to take with me traveling, essentially just to upload photographs with.
(I'm not taking my good Thinkpad: too large, too heavy, too valuable, too hard on batteries for this trip. Thought about my old 14 inch T-Series Thinkpad, which would be fine except it has USB 2 only and takes forever to upload pictures. The same applies to my elderly ASUS Netbook. I dislike those special-purpose upload-picture bricks. so buying something new was the only answer.)
REQUIRED FEATURES (or at least desired): 2 x USB 3 ports, cheap. Small, light, long battery life, Windows (not Android or Chrome or any other rubbish).
NOT REQUIRED: speed (any CPU is OK), RAM beyond enough to single-task, storage space (I'll need to use external drives anyway).
I wound up with a very small Dell. Beautiful sharp 11 inch screen, folds backwards to convert into a tablet (cute, though probably useless), some gutless little wonder of an AMD CPU, 4GB RAM, 32GB flash storage, only one USB 3 port (so I have to use an adaptor) but two USB 2 (which is handy), $400, which is really, really cheap.
RESULT: It is a lovely little unit in most respects, but the 32GB non-upgradable hard drive is a disgrace. It is so small that it is unable to run Windows Update. In my book, that makes it not fit for purpose, and Dell should be prosecuted by Consumer Affairs and made to pay a massive fine for fraud. It is just not good enough to sell equipment which the ordinary user cannot in fact use because it is unfit for purpose. (I naturally assumed that Dell had done some de-crappified thing with Windows 10 to make it fit OK in 32GB. It never even occurred to me that they would ship something so bad that it does not even work ex-factory.)
Sadly, and much against my better nature, I have opted not to return it for refund. Instead, I bought a 64GB micro-SD card (another $40) which makes it OK for someone with my skills (but not, repeat not, a typical user with average skill) to operate. This is like paying off the blackmailer, but there doesn't seem to be much alternative. Lenovo have one at about the same price, but the screen is really carp. The larger Dell, with 128GB on-board, only has 2 USB ports. Three is much better.
(I'm not taking my good Thinkpad: too large, too heavy, too valuable, too hard on batteries for this trip. Thought about my old 14 inch T-Series Thinkpad, which would be fine except it has USB 2 only and takes forever to upload pictures. The same applies to my elderly ASUS Netbook. I dislike those special-purpose upload-picture bricks. so buying something new was the only answer.)
REQUIRED FEATURES (or at least desired): 2 x USB 3 ports, cheap. Small, light, long battery life, Windows (not Android or Chrome or any other rubbish).
NOT REQUIRED: speed (any CPU is OK), RAM beyond enough to single-task, storage space (I'll need to use external drives anyway).
I wound up with a very small Dell. Beautiful sharp 11 inch screen, folds backwards to convert into a tablet (cute, though probably useless), some gutless little wonder of an AMD CPU, 4GB RAM, 32GB flash storage, only one USB 3 port (so I have to use an adaptor) but two USB 2 (which is handy), $400, which is really, really cheap.
RESULT: It is a lovely little unit in most respects, but the 32GB non-upgradable hard drive is a disgrace. It is so small that it is unable to run Windows Update. In my book, that makes it not fit for purpose, and Dell should be prosecuted by Consumer Affairs and made to pay a massive fine for fraud. It is just not good enough to sell equipment which the ordinary user cannot in fact use because it is unfit for purpose. (I naturally assumed that Dell had done some de-crappified thing with Windows 10 to make it fit OK in 32GB. It never even occurred to me that they would ship something so bad that it does not even work ex-factory.)
Sadly, and much against my better nature, I have opted not to return it for refund. Instead, I bought a 64GB micro-SD card (another $40) which makes it OK for someone with my skills (but not, repeat not, a typical user with average skill) to operate. This is like paying off the blackmailer, but there doesn't seem to be much alternative. Lenovo have one at about the same price, but the screen is really carp. The larger Dell, with 128GB on-board, only has 2 USB ports. Three is much better.