In the market for a new laptop

[ApexMods]

Looking for recommendations.

My trusty old MacBook is falling apart, and as I probably cannot afford another Mac, I‘ll be looking for a cheap(!) PC (Linux/Windows) alternative.

It needs to be as portable (small, thin, and light) as possible, while still being able to run (mainly older) games at reasonable performance and have enough CPU oomph (dual/quad+ cores), screen real estate (1440x900+), RAM (8+ GB), and SSD storage (256+ GB) for development work (e.g. my dev folder for GRHU alone uses a couple of hundred GB).

Mainly been using Macs since the 80s, and not all that up-to-date on the other side of the fence.

Thanks for any info you folks can provide.

[Rocky]

I've never bought a laptop before but after a quick research, gaming laptops are crazy expensive.

Even the top 10 budget gaming laptops are mostly $1k+ https://www.laptopmag.com/uk/articles/sub-1000-gaming-laptops

Although you might not need the advanced GPU in most of those, you will need the space and the RAM.

What I usually do when buying new gear is to go to your favourite e-store > select the range > then sort by price. Then focus in on the price you are willing to spend and you'll get down to about 6 products that match. Pick from them.

 

[ApexMods]

Yes, I‘m trying to get my bearings in this. Exactly right about the GPU, it’s the RAM, SSD, and quad-core that makes it... complicated (expensive).

[ApexMods]

Meh, I‘ll probably look for an older/used MacBook instead. Had a closer look and there’s just too much essential (for me) stuff not (easily) possible on a Win/Linux-only machine, while a Mac allows all OS to run in parallel, if need be. Yes, I looked into hackintosh, but it’s too much hassle.