what's A good laptop for a writer?

[The King of the Undead]

my mom wants a good laptop for writing. $500 - $600 (American) price range. OK with used/refurb.

[Applefreak]

Lenovo L series laptops new or used T series are great for writing. If she likes a keyboard with more actuation force, the older keyboards found on models up to the x30 (like t430, t530, x230) had the classic keys with the larger caps and more clicky sound. 

Why I recommend think pads is because even used they can be upgraded and fixed pretty easily in most cases.

 

Stay away from used apple, asus, msi and every ultra thin device. They are a pain to maintain. Used Dell XPS are fine as well so are some hp business class laptops but think pads can be found pretty easily around that price point.

[The King of the Undead]

3 minutes ago, Applefreak said:

Lenovo L series laptops new or used T series are great for writing. If she likes a keyboard with more actuation force, the older keyboards found on models up to the x30 (like t430, t530, x230) had the classic keys with the larger caps and more clicky sound. 

Why I recommend think pads is because even used they can be upgraded and fixed pretty easily in most cases.

 

Stay away from used apple, asus, msi and every ultra thin device. They are a pain to maintain. Used Dell XPS are fine as well so are some hp business class laptops but think pads can be found pretty easily around that price point.

what makes them difficult to maintain?

[Applefreak]

Hard to open without breaking stuff like those plastic pins, in case of apple not an issue but macbooks tend to have a shortened life span anyways. Opening up most think pads, cleaning out dust, replacing the thermal paste and putting it back together will take you about an hour the first time. If you are used to the manual, more like 20 minutes. I always recommend those to my friends and family if a parent for example wants something that just works and if you needed to clean it once in a while you wouldn't risk braking it and then having to explain why you suddenly can no longer fix it.

Look at specific models and then see if there is a youtube howto guide for disassembly. If it seems straight forward and can be done without picks and suction cups, you're good to go.

Also look for a device that has easy access to memory and hard drive so you can replace them easily. Most refurb laptops will either have a slow drive in it or sometimes none at all. 

[kelvinhall05]

Used Thinkpad. I would recommend an X1 Carbon (you will likely find a 4th or 5th gen for your budget). If she wants something smaller (screen size), an X-series. If for some reason she needs more IO than an X1 but doesn't want a small display, T-series.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 hour ago, valdyrgramr said:

Well, some Apple laptops have keyboards that are known for failing.   Plus, ASUS/MSI/Apple and a few others have a lot of models that can be a pain to open and have a lot of soldered on parts that are difficult to swap out once they fail.

Recent ASUS Vivobooks in the 15-17" range have been very serviceable. Even though they're pretty much ultrabook thin, everything you would ever want to replace on a notebook is accessible. They even come with a M.2 SATA slot and a 2.5" SATA bay. It's one of the only main-stream consumer laptops I've found to have the ability to house two drives in such a thin package.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 minute ago, valdyrgramr said:

I have an ROG Zephyrus that I won, and it was a bit annoying opening up to add an extra stick of ram.   I believe the optane stuff drive/ram stuff they put in is soldered on.

Funny how their enthusiast stuff ends up being less upgradable than their consumer stuff. RAM upgrade for me is just take out the dozen of screws present, pry the cover off, and the slot is right there ready to be populated.