I have a few questions to run by anyone with an opinion and time to answer. Purchasing a new HP and some spec questions.
I store almost all files, photos, etc. on the cloud rather than the PC. I am thinking a 256 SSD will be ample. Am I giving up anything by going this route?
On all my Windows and Mac machines, I go with 16GB of RAM. With Linux, I am thinking I can get by with 8GB as plenty. I am not a gamer, heavy graphics creator or anything of the like.
any thoughts on wifi and bluetooth? a/g/n vs ac vs ax?
I can burn through RAM pretty easily on Zorin OS even. I have 16 gigs and hunger for more.
I think you are probably right on your assessment, though. Leave room to add more if you can.
The 256 SSD sounds sufficient for your purposes. I am not a gamer, either. So, I have far more free space than I need. While I prefer a 500 gig disk space... I honestly can make do on half that without ever filling it quite easily.
And I do actually do graphics creation.
I think, Everyone has a Dream of Choosing his/her PC specs, honestly If you can Afford More Ram, Then Go for It
Cause the PC runs like Butter with a better ram and processor
Honestly no one want's to get frustrated by their PC So, here are the Min Spec's I assume will be great for a PC.
Processor >= 8 cores
Ram >=16
SSD min min 128 for OS booting and the rest can be HDD upto 1 TB.
256GB as storage space should be more than enough for your use case. I you ever need more, and don't want to upload to the cloud for whatever reason, you can always buy an external 1TB hard drive relatively cheap nowadays.
As for RAM, I rarely go over the 8GB usage (currently have 16GB). The most intensive task for me is probably running virtual machines, and having that extra RAM is certainly welcome and comfortable, though I could get by without it. RAM is cheap as well nowadays, but if you are still not convinced I would suggest to look into hardware that you can upgrade later on.
Have you looked into the HP Dev One? It's a relatively new hardware they released with full support for Linux.
Thanks, everyone for your comments and suggestions. They are all helpful in giving me a few things to think about and on some points validating my thought. When I switched to Linux last year, I was amazed at how much better both my at the time 8 yr old iMac and 18 year old Toshiba Satellite ran on Zorin and LXLE respectively. And from my reading since, I have come to expect better performance with less compared to Apple and Windows. In the past, on the other platforms I have more often than not purchased as much computer as my budget would allow. This time I am attempting to purchase as little computer as will get me good performance. My thought is I might acquire over time a few more cost efficient computers so I can tinker around and try different things on them. My 18year old Toshiba went from a brick with Windows XP to an amazing machine considering it is 18 years old, low specs and 32-bit. The main reason I am purchasing a new laptop is I want a second computer to tinker around on that can run modern software and peripherals. I just can’t tinker with that many things on the Toshiba since it is 32-bit. I don’t tinker on the iMac much because I have it set up perfectly to my needs and tastes and I don’t want to mess it up. So this new machine with be my machine to tinker and learn and find out what works and doesn’t. Things that work and I find useful with my tinkering will likely find their way to the iMac. I am also trying to talk my employer into letting me buy-on-the-cheap their HP Elitebooks as they seem to always be retiring them. Wish me luck there.
