I really believe these laptops wouldn't have a market at all if consumers were educated. I bought a 4 year old Sony Vaio in 2014 for $200 and, while it wasn't a gaming powerhouse, because it was able to be upgraded it was a good machine for normal use and I used it in highschool and college until 2018. These companies know they're selling e-waste and the fact you can't even upgrade the pitiful 32 gigs of storage really accelerates the factory to landfill pipeline.
ya i had the very first hp stream laptop with 4gb of ram and 32gb of storage... it was very bad because windows 10 by it self took up 2/3 of the tiny 32gb drive! i hated that laptop! i think at one point i tried putting windows 10 lite on it which helped with performance and gave it a bit more storage.. your better off getting a cheap older intel macbook air like the a1466 or a1465 model because at least you can swap the ssd out with something bigger.. and if the battery craps out you can just replace it by removing a few screws...
I have the quadcore version of this CPU (celeron N4120) in my laptop with 256GB NVME SSD and 8GB RAM. In this configuration, the laptop is great for office tasks, internet browsing and watching UA-cam videos. The big plus of these laptops is the low TDP of the CPU (6 watts) and therefore the long battery life. My laptop is already 5 years old, but can still work for 10 hours on a full battery.
Quad cores is already going to be a huge step-up. I tried using a laptop with 8GB RAM and a Celeron N3350 dual-thread, and the multitasking experience was horrible. At least the single-core performance was tolerable.
Hey! I daily drive the white version of one of those! The 2GB RAM version runs xubuntu pretty well, but of course it struggles with web browsers. I got it in exchange for teaching kids scratch at school (They got it as a demo and went for chromebooks instead, so they just had it laying around) It has served me very well and it will get me through university at this rate. The battery is definitely the biggest downside, it is down to 40% of it's original capacity and it shows...
the crazy thing is that this thing could technically run windows 11. The N4000 is surprisingly on the supported CPU list, somehow... Can't imagine it'd be very good though.
I once used a Lenovo 120S-11IAP laptop, and trust me, that was abysmal too. Celery processor, 4GB DDR3 (I think? - oh, soldered) and 32GB eMMC. They really would have been better just putting in a SATA slot and a regular 2.5in HDD. Yeah, these devices are trash and to be honest one would be better just going onto the used market. For £200 (in the UK) you could have got a trashbook brand new. Or you could have got a used 15.6in laptop with proper upgradeable RAM and storage (oh and a DVD drive too) and anything up to a 4th gen Intel i5. The difference was night and day.
I have a secondary laptop from 2014 which has weaker CPU. BUT it had upgradable SSD and RAM, which I did. It came with Windows 8 and 2GB of RAM and a 500GB mechanical drive. I upgraded it to 256GB SATA SSD, Windows 10, and 8GB of RAM, even though the manufacturer said it can't see more than 4GB. It's no beast, but it performs better than yours in this video. I assume if you could upgrade yours it would be even better. Pity about the soldered parts. It could make, at least spec wise, a decent laptop for basic or old stuff. Cool video.
Dude the only thing decent about that IO is the microSD card slot lol. This is how low the standards are now for ports on laptops.. :( Anyway cool short video! Things have probably shifted since I last looked into lightweight but friendly Linux distros but I'd suggest a look at Puppy Linux, or maybe possibly Debian.
I've been a PC Tech since 2005, and for me, Laptop Technology has been spiraling down since mid to late 2010s in terms of repairability and upgradability (not all but most of them)... From Simple Upgrade back then that needs Disassembly now to just to Replace Battery, Keyboard, HDD/SSD, and RAM... To Soldered Non Upgradable Miniscule RAM and Storage (F that Mini HP Laptop)... To Super Flimsy Brittle Expensive Uber Slim Oven Laptops that sacrifices Heat Dissipation for Longevity, for the sake of aesthetic (F that Acer Nitro Laptop)... ... All I wanna say is, almost everything nowadays are disposable, so do your research, be wise of your purchases and never be a slave in this system...
$200 in 2018 could have purchased something pretty decent I would think. I spent $150 at MicroCenter in 2015 or so for a new Celeron Acer laptop (N3450, 4GB/32GB, 14 inch) and to be honest I haven't bought any other Windows laptops since. I haven't NEEDED one. That little guy lives in my workshop now and provides all the UA-cam fix-it videos needed when I'm neck deep in fixing the wife's car. It doesn't even have a working HDMI port (it HAS one, there's just nothing connected to it inside the computer, so it does nothing). No USB-C, but it has one USB 3.0 port and several 2.0 ports. No SD card reader, not even Ethernet. But it does connect to the Wifi on my phone so I can do the few things I need it to do and that's good enough.
Were it not for web bloat, I could have probably stayed on my 2013 dell latitude with 4 GB of RAM for another couple of years thanks to Linux. Mint isn't particularly lightweight but tbh any Linux distribution is significantly lighter than Windows in 2024.
I'm a Linux enthusiast, I already used almost everything even Gentoo. And Mint for me is the best linux distro, I never had bugs with it and it's easy to use. Mint just works it's the best distro for everything, even gaming. I use Arch it's good too but you lose a lot of time configurating things. You can just stick with Mint, and Xfce is the best light-weight interface.
back in 2018 i needed a laptop for school, and bought an ASUS TP203NAH. came with non upgradable everything, and powered by a celeron (i think it was an N3350?). that thing's keyboard broke after 2 years, and started to turn off at random after some 3 years. only thing good bout' it is the 1TB HDD i got to use on my other laptop. it even likes to get hot as it don't have a fan.
I have this exact model of laptop but with 2 gigs of ram. It might be a big meme but I actually think it's a pretty reasonable device solely for moonlight/sunshine as I get around 4 hours of battery life and just treat it like a thin client. For that purpose, It's serviceable and gets the job done for my classwork and most of whatever I need to hook into my desktop for as long as it holds a decent internet connection.
the part that I dont' like the most is that to put the lid on, one of the screws goes through the battery, even though I know they made it properly I can't help but feel queezy about screwing directly through the middle of the battery.
I used to have one of these things, but I have a different model than yours. Mine is an E200HA, and the specs are worse than yours. Intel Atom at 1.8Ghz, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. I swore by that machine through the use of Debian running the i3 window manager, which is a heck of a lot slimmer than Linux Mint or Ubuntu. That machine is such a piece of junk but I like its portability and how well it runs Linux, even if the battery lasts only two hours and I can't have more than 4 tabs open in Firefox. These days though? I swore by my M1 Macbook Air which is a much more pleasant experience.
I just save a laptop like this one for my workplace. My poor colleague using this machine under windows 11, it can't even start up properly. With edge, it uses the processor like a 100%. I dual boot the machine with Lubuntu 24.10, it was usable after that. For the bare minimum, browsing the internet is possible.
i had one of these that ran linux mint for many years, but 4GB of RAM will only take you so far. Agreed, worst laptop I ever owned. I now have an 8th gen Thinkpad Carbon x1 with Mint and it's probably the best laptop I've ever owned.
On devices with less than 8GB of RAM and slow storage (e.g. HDD) you should disable swap and use zram. It compresses the data sent to RAM to pack more GB into the same sticks in exchange for some CPU usage. As for what Linux distro is fastest: there isn't really any difference between the common ones in speed.
As a basic machine for web use it would be alright, except for the lack of storage. I have a similar Geobook with 64GB storage which is just enough for Windows.
A few years ago I had a 11 inch Lenovo, had 2GB of ram and 32GB of storage. Windows 10 ate like most of it for whatever reason. TBH I think Microsoft should make another OS for lower end systems because Windows in S mode is total BS
The worst laptop I have ever used was a cheap Dell Inspiron from 2018 (don't know the model number, it was 12.5 inches) It had 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and an AMD processor. It was good at first but later on it got so slow it would take TEN minutes to even reach the desktop! I later got rid of it and I now use an iPad.
I had this exact laptop and downloaded Linux mint 2 years ago, it was decent but recently updating from 21 to 22 broke the os and the laptop is softlocked... :0/...
try something like antiex or linux lite or puppy linux. you might have better luck. The fact you can not upgrade ram or the drive is just mind numbing.
2:52 Keep in mind that video playback on Linux is always going to be horrible. I think you would have way better experience in Windows because even Cherry Trail Atoms can support 4K60 video playback in Windows with hardware acceleration. Whereas I don't remember being able to get HW acceleration to work even after installing VAAPI, I guess it's only really for encoding and not for decoding.
Oh I see. Thanks for all the info. That would make sense honestly although I do remember 4k playback not being smooth on windows on that laptop either but it may have been a little better.
@@Featherwhisker2 The issue is consistent with any and all distros I've tried. On any hardware, be it Intel or AMD. A regular user especially won't be able to troubleshoot any of it, and he shouldn't. Windows is plain better for some things, the things that most people do on laptops.
now i've got a laptop for class which doesnt even run youtube videos at 720 (Celeron N2830 power, yeah baby) but still opens edge and firefox to do class task (which it barely cans tho) so im happy with it for now for the use it has
If it's yours and not the schools, I would turn off animations and transparency in the accessibility/ease of access settings, then install the uBO Lite extension in the browser and set it to complete blocking on the settings page, which will open after installation
Very weak art+ 80% of the laptop is a bettery. There would be people who are well served by something like this if it was made well. If they make something like this with a core ultra, removable ssd and good keyboard, teackpad, screen and sell it for 500 dollars it will decimate the market. But they wont. 1000 dollars or gtfo
and one thing those pieces off sh!t shoundn't be running Mint as Mint is way heavier than vanilla Ubuntu, I recommend you to use elementaryOS or puppyOs instead
Hey bro i owned almost all the laptop brands like Apple 2019 macbook I had,Dell Vostro my grandpas ,HP My cousin sisters, Toshiba Satellite Dynabook ,Asus Vivobook, Lenovo Thinkpad my mom uses , Again a mac with m2 chip my dads , Samsung Book my Moms Lil bros Acer old one Sony Vaio my dads sis laptop In my opinion Apple for that price its not worth Dell Vostro Slow but good and reliable Toshiba Dynabook Upgradable Good and Reliable Asus Vivobook editor Worth for the price and gaming and editing then my school work same for toshiba Thinkpad reliable but so so so slow boot time 5 minutes warning for AMD fan boys its having an AMD A8 with 8 or 6gb ram with hdd Samsung dont buy it so trash Within 2 months it got broke HP Having problems and always in repair Acer not reliable and not so good looking Sony Vaio Not worth for the price but reliable good looking but slow
@NomadByte don't actually use gentoo lol. linux mint xfce is good, but if your willing to spend more time and learn a bit, you could download something like arch or debian and do a minimal install, then just find a lightweight desktop environment you like and install it. Takes an lot more time then mint but especially with arch i'm sure you could make it pretty snappy depending on what you decide to install
Bro Asus is good just come here to India Kerala a shopkeeper will upgrade that so easily he upgraded an Compaq but not mine unupgradable laptop he will charge high plus if you go to his forever he will scam you
I really believe these laptops wouldn't have a market at all if consumers were educated. I bought a 4 year old Sony Vaio in 2014 for $200 and, while it wasn't a gaming powerhouse, because it was able to be upgraded it was a good machine for normal use and I used it in highschool and college until 2018. These companies know they're selling e-waste and the fact you can't even upgrade the pitiful 32 gigs of storage really accelerates the factory to landfill pipeline.
ya i had the very first hp stream laptop with 4gb of ram and 32gb of storage... it was very bad because windows 10 by it self took up 2/3 of the tiny 32gb drive! i hated that laptop! i think at one point i tried putting windows 10 lite on it which helped with performance and gave it a bit more storage.. your better off getting a cheap older intel macbook air like the a1466 or a1465 model because at least you can swap the ssd out with something bigger.. and if the battery craps out you can just replace it by removing a few screws...
I have the quadcore version of this CPU (celeron N4120) in my laptop with 256GB NVME SSD and 8GB RAM. In this configuration, the laptop is great for office tasks, internet browsing and watching UA-cam videos. The big plus of these laptops is the low TDP of the CPU (6 watts) and therefore the long battery life. My laptop is already 5 years old, but can still work for 10 hours on a full battery.
I remember how long the battery used to last. 6 watts is great for long battery life.
Quad cores is already going to be a huge step-up. I tried using a laptop with 8GB RAM and a Celeron N3350 dual-thread, and the multitasking experience was horrible. At least the single-core performance was tolerable.
The celeron is a really fast cpu actually. It gets from 0 to 100% almost instantly after turning the laptop on. 😂
Hey! I daily drive the white version of one of those!
The 2GB RAM version runs xubuntu pretty well, but of course it struggles with web browsers.
I got it in exchange for teaching kids scratch at school (They got it as a demo and went for chromebooks instead, so they just had it laying around)
It has served me very well and it will get me through university at this rate.
The battery is definitely the biggest downside, it is down to 40% of it's original capacity and it shows...
the crazy thing is that this thing could technically run windows 11. The N4000 is surprisingly on the supported CPU list, somehow... Can't imagine it'd be very good though.
I once used a Lenovo 120S-11IAP laptop, and trust me, that was abysmal too. Celery processor, 4GB DDR3 (I think? - oh, soldered) and 32GB eMMC. They really would have been better just putting in a SATA slot and a regular 2.5in HDD.
Yeah, these devices are trash and to be honest one would be better just going onto the used market. For £200 (in the UK) you could have got a trashbook brand new. Or you could have got a used 15.6in laptop with proper upgradeable RAM and storage (oh and a DVD drive too) and anything up to a 4th gen Intel i5.
The difference was night and day.
I have a secondary laptop from 2014 which has weaker CPU. BUT it had upgradable SSD and RAM, which I did. It came with Windows 8 and 2GB of RAM and a 500GB mechanical drive. I upgraded it to 256GB SATA SSD, Windows 10, and 8GB of RAM, even though the manufacturer said it can't see more than 4GB.
It's no beast, but it performs better than yours in this video. I assume if you could upgrade yours it would be even better. Pity about the soldered parts. It could make, at least spec wise, a decent laptop for basic or old stuff.
Cool video.
Dude the only thing decent about that IO is the microSD card slot lol. This is how low the standards are now for ports on laptops.. :(
Anyway cool short video! Things have probably shifted since I last looked into lightweight but friendly Linux distros but I'd suggest a look at Puppy Linux, or maybe possibly Debian.
I've been a PC Tech since 2005, and for me, Laptop Technology has been spiraling down since mid to late 2010s in terms of repairability and upgradability (not all but most of them)... From Simple Upgrade back then that needs Disassembly now to just to Replace Battery, Keyboard, HDD/SSD, and RAM... To Soldered Non Upgradable Miniscule RAM and Storage (F that Mini HP Laptop)... To Super Flimsy Brittle Expensive Uber Slim Oven Laptops that sacrifices Heat Dissipation for Longevity, for the sake of aesthetic (F that Acer Nitro Laptop)...
...
All I wanna say is, almost everything nowadays are disposable, so do your research, be wise of your purchases and never be a slave in this system...
Truee
More impressed by that download speed than the laptop 😅
Reminds me of my old Compaq Presario 2200, where everything was integrated onto the CPU and only the RAM could be upgraded. Fun times...
$200 in 2018 could have purchased something pretty decent I would think. I spent $150 at MicroCenter in 2015 or so for a new Celeron Acer laptop (N3450, 4GB/32GB, 14 inch) and to be honest I haven't bought any other Windows laptops since. I haven't NEEDED one. That little guy lives in my workshop now and provides all the UA-cam fix-it videos needed when I'm neck deep in fixing the wife's car. It doesn't even have a working HDMI port (it HAS one, there's just nothing connected to it inside the computer, so it does nothing). No USB-C, but it has one USB 3.0 port and several 2.0 ports. No SD card reader, not even Ethernet. But it does connect to the Wifi on my phone so I can do the few things I need it to do and that's good enough.
Were it not for web bloat, I could have probably stayed on my 2013 dell latitude with 4 GB of RAM for another couple of years thanks to Linux. Mint isn't particularly lightweight but tbh any Linux distribution is significantly lighter than Windows in 2024.
I'm a Linux enthusiast, I already used almost everything even Gentoo. And Mint for me is the best linux distro, I never had bugs with it and it's easy to use. Mint just works it's the best distro for everything, even gaming. I use Arch it's good too but you lose a lot of time configurating things. You can just stick with Mint, and Xfce is the best light-weight interface.
back in 2018 i needed a laptop for school, and bought an ASUS TP203NAH. came with non upgradable everything, and powered by a celeron (i think it was an N3350?). that thing's keyboard broke after 2 years, and started to turn off at random after some 3 years. only thing good bout' it is the 1TB HDD i got to use on my other laptop. it even likes to get hot as it don't have a fan.
I have this exact model of laptop but with 2 gigs of ram. It might be a big meme but I actually think it's a pretty reasonable device solely for moonlight/sunshine as I get around 4 hours of battery life and just treat it like a thin client. For that purpose, It's serviceable and gets the job done for my classwork and most of whatever I need to hook into my desktop for as long as it holds a decent internet connection.
the part that I dont' like the most is that to put the lid on, one of the screws goes through the battery, even though I know they made it properly I can't help but feel queezy about screwing directly through the middle of the battery.
Asus used to have quite reasonable laptops before but I won't anymore
"Literal Fwaste"
Those guts looking like a whole budget Android phone... 🤣🤣🤣
I used to have one of these things, but I have a different model than yours. Mine is an E200HA, and the specs are worse than yours. Intel Atom at 1.8Ghz, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. I swore by that machine through the use of Debian running the i3 window manager, which is a heck of a lot slimmer than Linux Mint or Ubuntu. That machine is such a piece of junk but I like its portability and how well it runs Linux, even if the battery lasts only two hours and I can't have more than 4 tabs open in Firefox.
These days though? I swore by my M1 Macbook Air which is a much more pleasant experience.
Anything with eMMC storage (pretty much cell phone storage) and an Intel Celeron on a PC should be considered E-Waste at this point :D
I just save a laptop like this one for my workplace. My poor colleague using this machine under windows 11, it can't even start up properly. With edge, it uses the processor like a 100%. I dual boot the machine with Lubuntu 24.10, it was usable after that. For the bare minimum, browsing the internet is possible.
i had one of these that ran linux mint for many years, but 4GB of RAM will only take you so far. Agreed, worst laptop I ever owned.
I now have an 8th gen Thinkpad Carbon x1 with Mint and it's probably the best laptop I've ever owned.
On devices with less than 8GB of RAM and slow storage (e.g. HDD) you should disable swap and use zram. It compresses the data sent to RAM to pack more GB into the same sticks in exchange for some CPU usage.
As for what Linux distro is fastest: there isn't really any difference between the common ones in speed.
As a basic machine for web use it would be alright, except for the lack of storage. I have a similar Geobook with 64GB storage which is just enough for Windows.
yeah exactly but the storage really holds it back
A few years ago I had a 11 inch Lenovo, had 2GB of ram and 32GB of storage. Windows 10 ate like most of it for whatever reason. TBH I think Microsoft should make another OS for lower end systems because Windows in S mode is total BS
windows running on Chromebook hardware is the worst crime ever
HEAR ME OUT
The worst laptop I have ever used was a cheap Dell Inspiron from 2018 (don't know the model number, it was 12.5 inches) It had 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and an AMD processor. It was good at first but later on it got so slow it would take TEN minutes to even reach the desktop! I later got rid of it and I now use an iPad.
I had this exact laptop and downloaded Linux mint 2 years ago, it was decent but recently updating from 21 to 22 broke the os and the laptop is softlocked... :0/...
Horrific HalfLife machine
try something like antiex or linux lite or puppy linux. you might have better luck. The fact you can not upgrade ram or the drive is just mind numbing.
2:52 Keep in mind that video playback on Linux is always going to be horrible. I think you would have way better experience in Windows because even Cherry Trail Atoms can support 4K60 video playback in Windows with hardware acceleration. Whereas I don't remember being able to get HW acceleration to work even after installing VAAPI, I guess it's only really for encoding and not for decoding.
Oh I see. Thanks for all the info. That would make sense honestly although I do remember 4k playback not being smooth on windows on that laptop either but it may have been a little better.
I have a 2012 MBA running linux and I have full hw acceleration. VAAPI is hardware decoding not encoding
sounds like you just have a config issue
@@Featherwhisker2 The issue is consistent with any and all distros I've tried. On any hardware, be it Intel or AMD. A regular user especially won't be able to troubleshoot any of it, and he shouldn't. Windows is plain better for some things, the things that most people do on laptops.
@ those issues are caused by chrome and firefox disabling hw acceleration by default because they just suck and hate things working
@@Featherwhisker2 I vividly remember making sure to enable HW acceleration in both Chrome and Firefox and it still wouldn't work ever
The best laptop is the friends we made along the way
now i've got a laptop for class which doesnt even run youtube videos at 720 (Celeron N2830 power, yeah baby) but still opens edge and firefox to do class task (which it barely cans tho) so im happy with it for now for the use it has
If it's yours and not the schools, I would turn off animations and transparency in the accessibility/ease of access settings, then install the uBO Lite extension in the browser and set it to complete blocking on the settings page, which will open after installation
@@fred-youtubeyeah it’s totally mine, and all that stuff of animations, etc, it’s already done
I want to change may laptop with the model from the window. I have n4020
dang that laptop SUX whoever thought of this SHOULD BE FIRED!!!!!!
Bro used rufus instead of etcher, Blasphemy
whats wrong with good ol rufus
Yup, consumer grade ewaste
antix, i run it on .y hp laptop with a celeron n2840 worse than the n4000
and antix only uses like 300mb of ram idle and barely any cpu usage.
Reminds me of my asus a200h with an Intel atom
Very weak art+ 80% of the laptop is a bettery. There would be people who are well served by something like this if it was made well. If they make something like this with a core ultra, removable ssd and good keyboard, teackpad, screen and sell it for 500 dollars it will decimate the market.
But they wont. 1000 dollars or gtfo
Its good for 🐧 mint and steam streaming from ur main pc
this pc would be serviceable if it only had atleast 8gbs of ram
yep and if it had a little more storage it would be fine
i had this exact laptop with 2gb ram running windows 10
@@MAT_1922 I am still daily driving one of those, with xubuntu
oops i forgot to sub earlier lol
Dude i literally have the same laptop. Yes it was horrible
and one thing
those pieces off sh!t shoundn't be running Mint as Mint is way heavier than vanilla Ubuntu, I recommend you to use elementaryOS or puppyOs instead
Elementary is even worse than Ubuntu or Mint...plus Elementary is based around Ubuntu so there is no discernible difference.
I have a similarly speced laptop but from Acer
Hey bro i owned almost all the laptop brands like Apple 2019 macbook I had,Dell Vostro my grandpas ,HP My cousin sisters, Toshiba Satellite Dynabook ,Asus Vivobook, Lenovo Thinkpad my mom uses , Again a mac with m2 chip my dads , Samsung Book my Moms Lil bros Acer old one Sony Vaio my dads sis laptop In my opinion Apple for that price its not worth Dell Vostro Slow but good and reliable Toshiba Dynabook Upgradable Good and Reliable Asus Vivobook editor Worth for the price and gaming and editing then my school work same for toshiba Thinkpad reliable but so so so slow boot time 5 minutes warning for AMD fan boys its having an AMD A8 with 8 or 6gb ram with hdd Samsung dont buy it so trash Within 2 months it got broke HP Having problems and always in repair Acer not reliable and not so good looking Sony Vaio Not worth for the price but reliable good looking but slow
Gentoo is pretty lightweight and great for beginners 👍
Yeah someone else also said I should try Gentoo, I'll give it a go thanks
@NomadByte don't actually use gentoo lol. linux mint xfce is good, but if your willing to spend more time and learn a bit, you could download something like arch or debian and do a minimal install, then just find a lightweight desktop environment you like and install it. Takes an lot more time then mint but especially with arch i'm sure you could make it pretty snappy depending on what you decide to install
Bro Asus is good just come here to India Kerala a shopkeeper will upgrade that so easily he upgraded an Compaq but not mine unupgradable laptop he will charge high plus if you go to his forever he will scam you
send it to me then :), PLEASE I BEG OF YOU
PLEASE MY LAPTOP CAN JUST RUN UA-cam
why’d u buy it if you clearly don’t like it??
well back when I bought it I had pretty much zero knowledge on anything to do with computers lol.
@ right but your video showed u hating it why would u still buy it after this video?
@@agogobellsman Literally in the first 5 seconds of the video, he says he bought it back in 2018 and didn't know how bad it was before buying it.
Are u stupid?
@ right i get that i just don’t understand why he still bought it 😅 am i missing something
use gentoo noob