On Tue, 19 Mar 2024 17:18:50 -0400, Richard Aiken wrote:

>I'm beyond frustrated with my several-year- old Surface Pro. Its original
>type cover stopped working a while ago and it has an annoying habit of not
>acknowledging the generic replacement I bought. Also, I have to use a
>rather Rube Goldberg arrangement of cables and boxes in order to connect
>peripherals (such as flash drives and printers) to it.

Ouch. I never considered a Surface Pro to be viable as a replacement for a
"real" laptop or desktop computer, just something that was a bit more
convenient to carry and which I could do some basic editing, email, and web
browsing on. And yes, the early TypeCovers were a bit hinky, and generic
replacements are suboptimal (been there, done that).

>Therefore, I'm looking for a good, reasonably-priced replacement. By
>"reasonably-priced," I mean under $500 US. I'd like this new machine to
>have a good-sized screen of decent resolution, since I mostly use it to
>create illustrated handouts for my tabletop games with its secondary use
>being that of watching videos on Prime, Hulu, YouTube, etc. Also, it should
>jave at least two (2) built-in USB ports.

You're not going to get that price point for anything with decent
performance. Quite honestly, I don't think you get acceptable performance
and screen resolution until you _start_ with three times that price point,
and it goes up from there.

>Anyone care to suggest something? Thanks in advance for whatever help you
>can provide!

Given my comment above, Dell. I'd suggest you look at the business/
enterprise class configurations; those are somewhat less powerful than the
gaming configurations, but decent performance at a less-uncomfortable
price. I do Freelance Traveller on one, an Inspiron 16. There's also a
general level of comfort that they won't have spyware in the firmware,
since that would kill their government contract business, which is a
significant part of their revenue.

Alienware is Dell, but that label is exclusively for gaming-level
performance. Definitely your best choice if you need that level of
performance, but if not, go with the actual Dell badge instead.

HP has mostly finished borging what used to be Compaq; unfortunately, it's
the HP people in charge, and their business plan seems to be both hardware
and software as a service - it hasn't to the best of my knowledge come to
their computers (yet), but they're moving over to you purchase the printer
_and_ purchase a _subscription_ to the _printer_ not just the supplies, and
if you stop paying the contract, the printer stops working. Not tolerable,
to me. And even less so for a computer.

Acer still has a good rep, but they're more focussed on the gaming-level
performance market. Not good value for the money unless you need that level
of performance, and even then, you'll probably do marginally better with
Dell.

Microsoft is still making Surface Pro, and the Surface line has expanded to
full laptops (under the line names Surface Laptop and Surface Book). These
are usable, but suffer from Apple syndrome (i.e., you're paying for the
name, not the configuration).

LG is developing a reasonable reputation, but availability is very spotty
and inconsistent, with long waits if your chosen configuration doesn't
happen to be in stock at the time.

I trust Samsung for Android phones and tablets; I don't have an opinion for
larger devices.

I'd stay away from Lenovo; they no longer have the IBM reliability that
they did when they were spun off (but then, it's not clear that IBM has the
IBM reliability any more), and they're now pretty much completely
home-grown in the PRC; even the ThinkPads are no longer rebadged Toshibas.
There have been accusations of spyware in the firmware, not actually
proven. They're not eligible to bid on most government contracts in the US,
and many corporations that want to do business with governments in the US
will tend to avoid Lenovo.

Panasonic is mostly no longer a player, except in the ruggedized
marketplace. We (NYPD) use them as the vehicle-mounted computers in patrol
cars, but everything else is Dell.

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