My brother has to start dialysis this week and since he's
going to be spending a lot of time there every week he wants
to get a laptop so he'll have something to do.

Problem is neither one of us really know much about laptops.
He doesn't need a fancy one or anything. He just wants to be
able to do the following stuff:

- Play mp3's
- Play DVD's
- Stream Netflix & Hulu
- Play GOG games (Just older stuff from the 90's. Nothing to demanding.)
- Needs a headphone jack

He has a budget of about $300. Does anyone have any suggestions
on a decent one? Any help would be greatly appreciated. :)

EDIT: Which OS would be best for GOG games? It seems like Win7 would be better
but all the laptops I've seen have Win8.1. Will Win8.1 cause many compatibility problems?

EDIT 2: I forgot to mention that he needs it to have a headphone jack. I don't know if
that's pretty standard for laptops or not?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA42J2B34929

Only has integrated Intel graphics from the CPU. Still should play most older games. I'm assuming he's going to play turn-based or other non-action games. No Sin or other first-person action shooter things. That would be difficult without a mouse. Strategy, point-and-click, turn-based rpgs - these you can play well with the little Lenovo nub.

Does the dialysis center have wifi? And is it good enough to stream Netflix? Worth asking so he's not disappointed. Or at least bring your games and DVDs in case the wifi lets you down.

I don't believe that you can get Windows 7 without getting a used computer.

I'd skip the DVDs and get an external drive if your brother needs to watch DVDs that badly. And pretty much any laptop ought to be able to do the rest of it.

You might consider getting a Chromebook as those are commonly under $300 and can do the things you list.

Agreed, skip the DVD support, since you can play raw DVD ISO's on media players, or as mp4's, so just put it on thumb drives or something.

Honestly as long as you can decode mp4, you can do everything... I'd recommend a Raspberry Pi, but it's technically not a laptop, and you can't play GoG games (as it's ARM and not x86)

Hi! First of all, best wishes for your brother. One relative of mine pass intro dialysis and I know it can be hard time.

Well, get a new Windows 7 laptop will be almost impossible; Microsoft stops selling OEM licenses a few months ago. Also, be careful between getting a NoteBook laptop, NOT a Netbook. Last ones are low ended machines which will made your brother suffer.

What you should know about laptops is that most are build this way:

** CPU brands: **
-AMD family A4 / A6 / A8 / A10 (The higher, the better. Some exceptions may apply)
-Intel family i3 / i5 / i7 (The higher, the better. Some exceptions may apply)

** Graphics: **
-AMD APU (The Ax family) is chip that split job between CPU and graphic card, which give you a more enhanced environment in gaming. Also, prices are better than Intel; a good point to consider due the 300$ budget.
-Intel processors will include Intel HD Graphics, which sucks HARD into the gaming world. No much to tell, just avoid it and take Nvidia or AMD. Sadly, Nvidia is out the map due the limit budget.

** Making a choice: **
For 300$ more likely you will found i3 + Intel HD graphics laptops, and that will be a waste of money due the low ended machine you will get. To get those 300$ more value per dollar, is better to get an AMD APU because it includes CPU + semi dedicated video card, plus a nice speed processor. A good video card is needed for HD videos.

This one is a good deal for a 300$ budget, includes an A4 APU:
Asus Netbook X102BA8

There is nothing much to say about the difference between the CPU's beside the price. Intel i7 is faster, but you will need to pay a lot of money to get it. People complain about AMD driver's stretching the image but there are work around for that.

As a last resource, ask for laptops in BestBuy stores because sometimes they sell good laptops at very nice prices because they don't sell it at time. I get an A8 3510mx laptop just for 600$, while it was like 1000$ at introduction in 2011.

That's a good point, and you don't even have to break the copy protection in order to do that. I had forgotten that if you just use DD to copy the disk 1:1 that you don't even need to crack it in order to play that back. Provided you use a player that can handle typical DVDs.

If not for the games, a tablet with a keyboard would do everything else.

Actually i think you do have to break copy protection, specifically the encryption. I remember trying to do a raw copy years ago on windows when i had access to the raw files, and like every other 200k was encrypted. When you use a decryptor that bypasses copy protection, it decrypts it at the same time leaving you with raw files that you can work with (the encryption key by this point is publicly known)

But on DVD's without encryption, direct DD will work just fine. As for a player, VLC i think you can mount a drive/device, and media player classic (part of CCCP)

+1 for AMD APU

To OP, most people will say Intel or go home but the truth is it depends.

If money is no object, then an Intel CPU with Radeon/GeForce is the way to go. But since money usually matters, you'd be relying on limited choices of cpu with integrated graphics at the $300 range.

if you want fast cpu processing (productivity software, media encoding, file compression, etc), an Intel processor would be what you're after at the cost of graphical power.

A more balanced approach is the AMD APU. CPU can't match Intel speeds but it's perfectly fine for everyday computing. But you'll gain a lot more graphics muscle to handle even just released GOG games, with some exceptions (yeesh Witcher 3).

Honestly, Intel integrated graphics isn't *that* bad.

I've got the Intel HD 4000 chip in my laptop, and that runs the likes of Neverwinter Nights perfectly well, and can cope OK with Neverwinter Nights 2 at lower graphics levels. No, you're never going to run The Witcher 2, but if I needed a cheap laptop for older games it wouldn't put me off.

What GOG games? The Witcher 2-3? Or just stuff from the 90s or less demanding indie games? With that low budget, I don't think it matters that much what he selects. It will have some kind of low-end Intel graphics chip etc.

I was also going to suggest skipping the DVD-ROM drive, but you did list he wants to watch DVDs... Current laptops come with Windows 8.x, was it so that Microsoft dropped DVD movie playback support in order to lower the price of the OS, but it is still possible to watch DVDs using third-party programs, possibly VLC and such?

I have Intel HD 4000 too on one of my laptops (HP ProBook 6470b). I was originally a bit worried mainly how good the backwards compatibility is (with e.g. older GOG Windows games and such), but so far it has been pretty ok in that regard.

The performance however is a bit on the low side, so like you said, don't expect to play Witcher 2 or better on it. The thing is, on another pretty cheap HP laptop there is a lower end Geforce mobile chipset, it gives much better performance than this Intel graphics laptop, based on how e.g. Witcher 2 or Race GRID runs. That laptop cost something like $700-800, but that was already a couple of years ago, so similar performance should be obtainable much cheaper now.

I tried Witcher 2 on that HP Geforce laptop, and I was positively surprised how well it seemed to run on it on something like medium settings (I think I used resolution 1280x720). I wasn't expecting it to run at all, or very poorly. (Sorry I don't recall exactly what graphics chip it was, possibly Geforce GTX 550M, but I think it was something even lower/older (540M, or maybe even 400M series)).

On this Intel graphics laptop though... yeah Witcher 2 runs, but only in pretty much lowest settings, and it looks quite a bit worse.

So it would still appear to me that _if_ you are able to buy a cheapo laptop with either NVidia or AMD lower-end graphics, it will probably still give quite a bit better gaming performance than Intel graphics on a similarly priced laptop. Then again, $300 is so low that maybe Intel graphics is the only option, in which case just forget about the Witcher games.

But for less demanding games, Intel graphics seems fine.

I'm actually amazed at what this graphics card can do. I've mentioned it before, but I'm able to run Dragon Age Inquisition on my laptop with Intel HD 4000 graphics just fine. Sure, all the settings are on the lowest of the low and of course the frame rates suck, but it's definitely playable. So, I'd agree in saying not to be too put off by a weaker graphics card.

Yeah I should have been clearer on that, sorry. He just wants to play the older stuff from the 90's.
Nothing too demanding. I'll edit my post above to fix this.

Well, the fact that his budget is quite low was a giveaway for that... I don't think he can find a $300 laptop to play more demanding (GOG) games.

So, I don't think it really matters that much which laptop he chooses in that price category. I almost suggested considering some cheapo Android tablet instead (especially is he uses it in the bed mostly), but naturally it can't play most GOG games (some may be playable through ScummVM and such), and not watch DVD movies either I guess.

Do you know if this laptop has a headphone jack? I looked at the specs but I couldn't tell.