I'm moving into my camper van soon and I was planning on bringing my Acer Chromebook 15 with me for low power consumption internet browsing, but that $300 piece of shit crapped out on me. I was getting pretty tired of the limitations of the os anyway, so I'll take this as an opportunity to get something even better for van life.
Problem is I'm not sure what that is. I need a 15 inch full HD screen machine that won't draw too many watts during normal useage so that my solar and battery setup can handle it. More watts means I have to spend more on solar panels and batteries, but I'm having trouble finding information about how much various models actually draw during normal use.
Do any of you guys have any suggestions for models that won't cause me to have to upgrade my 100watt solar setup just to run a laptop with this sort of screen? Slightly smaller might be fine but not too much. Any suggestions are highly appreciated!
Pic unrelated, resorting to phone posting unfortunately.
>I was getting pretty tired of the limitations of the os anyway You know you can install Linux on chromebooks, right?
Sebastian Turner
A T530 with a 1366x768 screen lasts 10 hours at 1/3 brightness, Arch linux, and guaranteed not to shit the bed.
Two HDDs mirrored with BTRFS in case of failure and a backup livecd plugged in and ready to boot in case of emergency.
6x the power of a chromebook and many times as durable and functional. Thinkpads are no meme.
Also look into 18650 lithium cells from laptop batteries. You can scavenge them and make a power bank with cheap amazon inverters and solar cells and charge controllers. Seriously, four 60Wh laptop batteries give you a quarter of a kilowatt of juice to spend.
Elijah Garcia
How are you gonna stay cool in the summer
Camden Nguyen
Yeah, I guess I could just buy another Acer Chromebook 15 and install Linux, but having had one fail on me just days after it's one year warranty expired makes me hesitant to buy another one if there are better ones that aren't too much more expensive that will likely last longer. I'm hoping someone who has been paying attention to the market for something like this more than me could give me some suggestions.
Sebastian Garcia
Thanks dude, I'll definitely take a look!
Josiah Jones
Generator to run the A/C. When it's hot power consumption probably won't be an issue but I'm planning on moving to stay in temp ranges I won't have to run the generator at much.
Thomas Rivera
Oh btw, do you think Full HD is possible with a less powerful processor because I'd rather have screen resolution over computing power.
Alexander Lopez
>buy pic related for 170 new in 2015 >only 32bit uefi >no multitouch trackpad
>battery life is amazing when you remove windoows 10 and install windows 8 >10 hours of hd video or old games like starwars bf2
Dont regret buying it, the battery life is amazing and the cpu is rated for 4.4w at 0.5v
Pic related, my lenovo ideapad 100s netbook
Charles Phillips
...
Joseph Lopez
CPU has nothing to do with driving the display, the GPU does. Even if you're using an iGPU, you should be just fine for media consumption. (1080P and below)
Christopher Jenkins
to add more info on this, here are the specs
1366x768 TN Display (It's OK but not very good) Intel Atom Z3735F @ 1.33GHz 4 cores 4 threads 2GB of DDR3 RAM 32GB SSD Can't upgrade either RAM or SSD but the battery life and low power use make this an ideal laptop for anyone who wants to run a low powered server or low power media consumption device. There is a microSD slot and HDMI out along with 2 USB ports.
OP should look into this if it fits his needs, it's served me well.
Isaiah Lewis
As someone on a T60 (just to give you an idea) 720p is fine as long as the FPS isn't too high.
Austin Howard
You can get a USBC 15" FHD display thats entirely powered over the USB connection these days.
Owen Williams
OP here, I've been looking and I think I'm going to have to go down to a 14 inch to get 1080p. I don't know how people use 720p in 2017 on anything bigger than a phone. I found a t460s on Amazon for a little under $800 that I'm considering be cause Thinkpad durability seems attractive but it's still a little more than I'd like to spend.
Gavin Perez
> I don't know how people use 720p in 2017 on anything bigger than a phone
Sitting a proper distance from the screen.
Jason Parker
And then you have to turn the text to gigantic size and can only fit half the information. No thanks.
Jason Young
Well, it's your blindness.
Angel Rogers
Nice tips, I specifically liked the idea about the 18650 lithium cells.
I must ask though, are you a terrorist? Lol.
OP, how about an Ultrabook like a macbook, or a used Carbon X1 and a new battery? or even an Asus UA130 or Zenbook? Powerful laptop, light, with good battery. Any of these or usually any ultrabooks will get you there champ.
Adam Carter
Well, since I really only need this for basic web browsing and multimedia playback I just basically got the windows version of my acer chromebook. It has an i3 and a slow HDD but it should do the job well enough. I invested in a three year protection plan too this time so if I have another failure it won't be a problem.
