Best Black Friday Laptop
 

I want to take advantage of Black Friday deals. Can anyone recommend a cheap laptop for tuning with MegaSquirts. Best Buy has a ton for under 200 I am just having a bear of a time figuring out what Tunerstudios needs to run.... windows, Linux, Mac, chrome book? 4gb or 8gb .... how much memory? Etc. Sooo new at this. Thank you for any quick responses. I'm currently drinking at a bar in the parking lot of Best Buy.

Personally I’d avoid chrome books, get a windows 10(pro?) laptop, with as much ram as is in my budget. I’d set my goal to 16gb, definitely not 4.

Oh, and smaller the better while working in a Miata. I’d go for 15” or under. Looks like there’s not a lot of selection for under $200 and 16gb, so you might settle for 8 or 12.

Sub 200$ you can get something chinese - it's not fast but certainly fast enough for tunerstudio. Using an older/slower chuwi herobook pro myself, it's fine for what you're paying.
https://store.chuwi.com/products/chuwi-herobookpro

Thanks for the replies. I decided on a refurbed Dell I found locally. 8Gb RAM , 120gb SSD. for $150. I hope it does what i need

I would of went a little higher on budget.
quad core, 16gb of ram, and a 250gb SSD is pretty standard for a used $200 PC these days.

Tunerstudio isn't very demanding, i run it just fine on a 10 year old Yoga.

For a MS-only tuning laptop you want (in no specific order but you want them all):
1. Small size, 14" or 15" so you can easily manipulate it in the passenger seat or put it down anywhere - you DON'T need a keyboard
2. Rugged - DON'T but anything with a plastic shell or weak hinges.
3. Good screen - MUST support least 1280x1024 resolution, anything less means you'll be scrolling TunerStudio around just to see different parts of the main window.
4. 4GB RAM - any more just makes the laptop more expensive and TunerStudio doesn't need much memory
5. Touch screens are just a bonus - you wont use it much with a small screen and "fat fingers"
6. Make sure the laptop has actual physical mouse-left&right buttons - some simulate these on the touchpad - my work HP laptop does that and it's nearly impossible to select multiple items by "right-clicking and dragging".
7. Battery-life is important - DON'T buy/use a gaming laptop, they run out of power quick and are loud.
8. MUST have a SSD drive (at least 100GB) - The laptop will take a beating and be in a vibration-rich environment which mechanical drives don't like. If buying a 2nd hand laptop, buy a large SSD and replace its mechanical drive.

The screen should allow viewing with the top down but even the best are hard to read in the open so just put the top up when you're road-tuning.

Ruggedness is extremely important, you'll end up beating the crap out of it, especially when it comes to the screen's hinges.
Dell hinges have always been crap, even on their gaming laptops. You're also paying for Dell service support with a Dell so they'll always be more expensive than similarly-specced machines.

Lenovo Thinkpads are built to a military standard (not THE MOST RUGGED, but very rugged) and can really take a beating.
Thinkpads also have a "mouse nipple" on the keyboard in addition to the touchpad which is nice.

Bang-for buck, you can't go past a 2nd hand 14" Lenovo Thinkpad with 4GB of memory and at least one 100GB SSD.
Lenovo screens aren't as good as HP or Dell though :(

FYI: Lenovo laptops ARE made in China but their Thinkpads are built to the high standards IBM initially built them with because they know if they drop them, Thinkpads will no longer maintain their reputation and market share.

If it doesnt have an ssd, dont buy it. In fact, just a cheap ssd (<50$ nowadays) can really liven up any old hdd-dependent pc and supercede the need to replace it altogether, load times are night and day.
i5, 8+gb of ram, and a pleasing casing/keyboard/screen is my formula.

If you're looking to tune your car with a laptop then you should try this awesome article. https://wheelsrush.com/how-to-tune-a...essional-tips/

Why?

I'm a big fan of ThinkPads and other used business grade laptops, only downside is that a lot of them have not so great screens.

My current tuning laptop is a ThinkPad X240 with a 12.5" 1080p IPS touchscreen (bright enough to see in sunlight). It's a nice size where it can show everything I need but not too big to use in the car, it tucks away nicely behind the passenger seat when not in use. It has dual batteries so you can put in a big battery in the external hot swap slot for a lot of battery life. I got it for less than $200 on eBay.