🐌️ ➡️ 🏎️ An Intel Celeron Laptop is all I (and maybe even You) Need 🐌️ ➡️ 🏎️

2023-07-23

This is a little too lengthy of a post. For the summary/TLDR go to the bottom.

Being a not-bottom-of-the-barrel-poor person in a poor country, I need to make the most of the money available. I have access to a relatively powerful desktop, with a relatively old i5 CPU with an GTX 1650 GPU, I mostly use it when transcoding and editing videos.

Though initially intended for my use case, the computer ends up as a gaming rig for my sister for Valorant and Genshin and whatever games she plays on it. My personal use of it ends up as just as a storage medium for my documents and media (mostly academe-related stuff, and entertainment).

I do not regret spending my savings and my father's hard earned money because it was the best time to buy computer hardware as it was relatively affordable at the time (this is the usual case in a third-world country where computer parts are usually expensive).

What I haven't thought of is that I will need a new laptop. I thought my old laptop will still be okay for the next few years. Voila! It ends up booting up with a display with issues.

At first it was just horizontal lines (can't remember the color). It empedes the smooth use of the laptop as you literally can see the problem in front of your face. Though it doesn't empede the processing speed or the functionality, it gives a below-average experience. It doesn't even give a good usability and computing experience even when it was newly bought.

It was a little heavy Lenovo laptop. I think it was an ideapad-330-14ibd. It features

This is the exact model of my laptop. I just got the image in the internet.

• Microsoft Windows 10 (bloated and slow on slowass CPU and hard drive)
• 14-inch HD Display (a crappy TN display, heck I didn't know what kind of displays there were back on those days)
• Intel Core i3-5005U Processor 2GHz (3M Cache, 2.00GHz)
• 4GB RAM DDR3 (both RAM slots are upgradable)
• 1TB HDD Storage
• DVD+/-RW
• 2GB ATI EXO PRO R5 M330 DDR3L (barely any better than the iGPU in the CPU)
• 4CELL Battery

It was fine at first. I can comfortably use it for writing documents and presentations, browsing the web, playing music, and playing YouTube videos. I can even play SuperSmashFlash on it IIRC.

It was until a few Windows Updates. Even when setting the appearance settings to prioritize performance over appearance, it barely helped. Opening Word documents was slow. Watching anime and movies (local video files) was slow to start, some even straight up lagging in the middle.

Installing a fresh copy of Windows made it a little faster tho. Until almost a year again when it was slow with another set of Windows updates.

Found out about Linux. Thought for the next few months about using it. Realized most of what I do is just playing video and music files, web browsing, writign documents and presentations, no harm or significant change will be done with how I use my laptop. Backed up my files. Installed either Ubuntu or Elementary (can't remember which). Everything felt smooth and fast. Comes with a default set of applications that I will actually use. Nothing much to change. Used it as daily driver since then until the display broke (or more like a unique kind of connector for the display).

So yeah, linux saved my laptop. It saved me from buying a new laptop.

So what have I learned from all these?

1. Use Linux instead of Windows.
• I can no longer handle the bloated and slow nature of Windows
• the untimely updates,
• the BSODs (Blue Screen of Death)s,
• the crappy file manager that uses a different preference per folder (like why can't I set a preferred view style and sorting preference
• the malware that can be from flash drives or from the internet (please don't get me started on the even more bloated and ineffective anti-virus softwares)
• I have no need for MS Office, Adobe Software, and Video Games.
2. Laptop should have NO discrete GPU because I have no need for it. I barely play games and the ones I play can do fine on iGPU.
3. It should have at least 8GB of RAM. Web browsing will amount to a significant portion of computer use, might as well make it as smooth and performant as much as possible. Also for those extra browser tabs.
4. Its display should be at 14-inch 1080p IPS. Anything else is either not worth it or too pricy.
• This wish of mine wasn't followed when buying this laptop that I am currently using. Laptops with 14inch 1080p IPS displays are too expensive. And I have seen some and I cannot handle the small fonts and unusual scaling. 1366x768 gives the perfect default sizing for my use.
5. It should have an SSD instead of a mechanical hard drive. Storage should at least be 240GB
• This is followed to some extent. My current laptop has an EMMC storage. Speed is somewhere between that of a mechanical hard drive and an SSD. So good enough for me. And it has 128GB of storage. Not a dealbreaker as I already have access to a desktop with a 1TB hard drive.

The reason I bought this laptop specifically because it has:

• Processor: Intel Celeron N4500
• RAM: 4GB (initially came with; but I added another 4GB so it ended with 8GB total RAM)
• Storage: 128GB EMMC
• GPU: Intel UHD Graphics (too low end that it doesn't even have a proper name hahahaha 😂️
• Weight: Light as Fuck enough that it is not a pain to deal with and carry
• Display: 14-inch TN 1366x768
• ADDITIONAL: There is no disk bay (?), so less weight. It is the ultimate thin and light.

So that's how I ended up choosing this current laptop.

Actually, there is another one. And it's the PRICE. The usual laptops in USA that cost around $300 retails for around PhP25,000 (~$500) in the Philippines. So yeah, the average i3 or Ryzen 3 with 1080p IPS displays are around the PhP30,000 to PhP35,000 ($600-700) price range. I bought this laptop for around PhP15,000 ($300). It was a deal since its original price was around PhP19,000 (~$380).

So what here are just limitations of this very low end laptop

• The games that you play should be either 2D or from a few years back. You wouldn't expect a low end laptop to play AAA games.
• Video editing will be sluggish. I mean you can edit videos just fine but temper your expectations. This doesn't have any GPU other than the intel integrated GPU in the CPU. But it can do just fine, just without that much effects. Or if you want go ahead, just expect super long render times. No one's stopping you.
• You wouldn't want Windows in this machine if you use, or at least tolerate using, Linux. See, it comes with Windows 11, meaning it becomes a fucking slow piece of shit when doing stuff. Good thing I added a 4GB RAM stick in the available RAM slot as it was using around 2+GB of RAM on boot. Even with 8GB of RAM, browsing with either Chrome, Firefox, or Edge was horrible. Anything with more than 4 tabs of YouTube and you can feel it starts to lag and freeze.

  And I would've wanted to install Windows 10, if it will make it any more usable. Sad thing is Lenovo didn't write Windows 10 drivers for this laptop. 😢️

TLDR. Buy a laptop that suits your needs. If all you need to do is:

• browse the web
• write documents, spreadsheets, and presentations
• play video and music (both local and through streaming)
• as a storage medium
• occasionally edit images and videos
• play low-end games (low end means doesn't need to use that much CPU and GPU power for a good enough experience

then you can really make do with a low-end laptop like this Celeron of mine.

Blog Directory