Question Dang it!

My 20+ year old laptop just crashed. And I had been planning to back stuff up today. Now I need to find a new machine, in my budget, that has the system requirements I need. -bangs head into wall- Thankfully all I really lost was a page or so of writing, and my Sims 2 download folder.

What are your system requirements, and what sort of budget can you manage? I'm sure some of us can give some advice, if you want any.

Budget: 500 dollars
system reg:

Operating System
Windows® 8 or 10
CPU
Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz (or equivalent AMD CPU)
RAM
2 GB
Hard Disk
62 GB (had 500 something prior to compdeath)
Graphic Display
NVidia GeForce 8000, ATI/AMD Radeon HD 2000, Intel G965M Express, Intel HD Graphics 2000 or better (Supports Direct3D Hardware Feature Level 10 or higher)

HP 15-ef1072nr 15.6" Laptop Computer -
Silver AMD Ryzen 3 3250U Processor 2.6GHz;
8GB DDR4-2400 RAM;
256GB Solid State Drive;
AMD Radeon Vega 3 Graphics

25+ in stock at Marietta Store
Not On Display. Located In Laptops
$449.99

Current Microcenter Ad . Can be bought online and shipped...

OK, that is not a list too hard to shop for. I have a small subnotebook from the Vista era (which I swapped for one hour of work when the owner was going to get rid of it) that about fits those specs exactly -- it doesn't take more than 2Gb or RAM, but I replaced its HD with a SSD and it runs Windows 10 and Linux fairly well. So you should be able to find a cheap machine exceeding those specs with little trouble. I just checked Newegg, and saw many new notebooks in the US$350 range that should run rings around those specs. For $500, you should be able to get a fairly good one.

I would advice you to tweak your specs a bit. Consider the cost of replacing the HD with a SSD, insist on room to expand RAM to at least 4 Gb (8 Gb is better) even if you don't intend to install more right now, and check chipset/graphics compatibility with Windows 10 -- I think those 2000-series GPUs are no longer supported.

As an example of what can be found, check this one. I'm generally no fan of HP, and I tend to suggest people to buy a -5 series machine (Intel i5 or Ryzen5) or superior if possible, but for the price range this is a pretty good package:

www.newegg.com/p/1TS-000D-0EBP7?Descript...000D-0EBP7-_-Product

EDIT:
I see that E.E. has suggested a machine very similar to the one I did (it may even be the same model, didn't check) for an even better price. If you haven't looked at new PCs in the last three years or so, don't be discouraged by the non-Intel CPU -- AMD has been kicking Intel's butt consistently over the last few years, in the power-for-bucks game. Lower-end notebooks usually have to rely on built-in graphics instead of discrete GPUs, and this is another area where AMD is consistently better than Intel -- the built-in Vega GPUs are essentially a cheap (but up-to-date) Radeon you get for free, while the Intel Graphics GPUs are not as good.

-sigh with releasing stress- took most of the day, but I'm 98% back. Three things are irritating the heck out of me: 1- Lack of USB ports on my tablet (no mouse and jump-drive, one or other), 2- I can't find my Deviant Art password, 3- I can't remember the email account I used for it, I can't just do a recovery. As I was just using the account to view nsfw art, I'll likely just make a new account, again. Did loose some writing, but only a few pages.

Thank you EE and Sir Lee. You were both a big help.

Glad to help!

My pleasure.

Addendum on the Intel-vs-AMD thing:

Generally speaking, this is the "market equivalence" between AMD CPUs and Intel CPUs. By "market equivalence," I mean that they are marketed roughly to the same publics, not that they are technically equivalent. Intel tends to remove entire features from lower-end processors, while AMD tends to differentiate more on performance alone (number of cores, clock speed, cache size, bus width, this sort of thing -- meaning that for the most part, lower AMD CPUs can do everything the more expensive ones do, except slower). Also, generally you have to pay extra to get an Intel CPU that can be overclocked. Also, generally speaking you get more bang for your buck with AMD. The price difference is not as large nowadays (since Intel had to reduce prices to be able to compete), but still, lower-end Intel processors are slightly crippled.

Intel	AMD
Xeon	Epyc
i9	Ryzen 9 / Ryzen Threadripper
i7	Ryzen 7
i5	Ryzen 5
i3	Ryzen 3
Pentium	Athlon
Celeron	N/A

I'm happy.
Found a local place with reasonable prices, placed my order, it's now in, just need to wait for them to give it it's final checks, and it should be ready Monday all thing go right. Ended up with a refurbished HP Elitebook Folio.

Now I just need to remember where I saved my last Firefox back up.