Which laptop is better?!

Acer Aspire3 15.6in Celeron 4GB 128GB Laptop
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8214537

ASUS VivoBook X512 15.6in Athlon 4GB 128GB Laptop
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8764348?rec=PDP[8214537]:bottomSlider:P1:OHAT:alternative:8764348:izbEXe4oQaYgZtiCMdhw

no question second asus; chip is better and asus better brand. celeron SUCKS BAD. why these two? did your assessor pick for you?

Then in all honesty you're probably better off looking at used laptops. I don't typically like recommending used hardware for a variety of reasons, but buying new you're going to struggle to get anything at £350 that'll give you a comfortable experience using virtual machines.

In terms of what to look for, 8th gen CPUs are going to be the best value for performance, so something with an 8250U and 8GB of RAM. This is a good example of the sort of thing to look for, although it's a little above budget. But sleuthing around eBay you should be able to find something for under £350. For reference, a laptop like this nowadays would set you back in the region of £500-550.

4gb ram not good enugh?

Not really. You could split that, leaving 2GB for the host and 2GB for a Linux VM. It'd be okay with some lighter VMs and assumes your host isn't being used. But realistically speaking the more resources you have the better your experience will be. It also depends what you want the VM for, and the more demanding the task the more resources you want available.

My general rule of thumb when it comes to virtual machines (more specifically Linux VMs) is that you should be able to allocate "bare minimum" specs to each VM and still have enough left over for your host. Bare minimum here means 2 cores and 4GB RAM, as that's what a bare minimum laptop would look like. So if you want to run a single Linux VM on your host, that would mean you need 4 cores and 8GB of RAM. This ensures sufficient hardware overhead to continue using both systems. However this is a very broad generalisation, and it depends heavily on what you actually want to do.

It's also important to consider how your needs might change. 4GB of RAM basically gives you no growing room, and if you need a more powerful VM or your host needs to do work, that won't be an option. Similar story when you opt for a dual core system. This is the fundamental problem with buying cheap hardware, you get just enough to do what you need but frequently need to upgrade when your requirements change. Realistically speaking, you want as much hardware as you can get for your money when it comes to virtualisation. And unfortunately at £350 the most value for money will come from used hardware.

ohhh maaaaannn

in which case please pray the acer one comes back into stock for me, ive tried contacting argos but ofc due to the situation they have too much going on to reply. I checked out some used ones, and they're p much the same price as that argos one

There are better deals if you look around. For example this HP is £329, and the only immediate complaint I'd have with it is the screen resolution. You can also get lucky on a bid item, or maybe make an offer on a laptop that's close to your budget.

The Argos laptop is about the best you'll get in terms of new hardware at this price point, hence why it's sold out. But even that doesn't quite compare to used in terms of performance. The most notable difference is that the Pentium in the Argos laptop is a low speed quad core with no hyperthreading. Even with similar pricing, you're getting quite a lot more CPU performance out of a used 8250U at the expense of buying used. Is there any way for you to wait it out, make use of available computers/rented laptops and try to scrape together another £50 or so to improve your options? At the end of the day, paying out £350 for a laptop that might not even do what you need it to could be worse than having no laptop.

Also a word of caution, when looking at cheaper CPUs it's important to check that they support virtualisation technologies. The N5000 does, but some other cheap chips may not.

hi again, do u know if oracle vbox, alpine and debian woulld work on a windows 7 device?

I can't comment for sure, as I've never tried to use VirtualBox on Windows 7. If you were able to get hold of an old installer it may work, and even the more recent installers may be compatible. But I wouldn't actively recommend anyone use Windows 7 nowadays, both from a practicality and a security standpoint. Stick to Windows 10.

My vote to go to Laptop 2 as the Athlon CPU, while still underwhelming in the grand scheme of things, is much more powerful, and is lighter at 1.68kgs compared to 1.9kgs, though you might be better off spending the extra money for something a bit better, settling for a Chromebook, or finding a used laptop as most of the new Windows laptops for around this price aren't particularly great.

Ok thank you!

Would the 3 mentioned above be able to run on a laptop with the following spec:
Intel Celeron N4020 processor.
Dual core processor.
1.1GHz processor speed with a burst speed of 2.8GHz.
4GB RAM DDR4.
128GB SSD storage.
Windows 10 Home.

Intel UHD Graphics 600 graphics card.

Shared graphics card.

why did u change ur username bluewolf ?

Bluewolf has decided to leave TSR, if you see a username change to usernameXXXXXXX (a bunch of numbers) it means the account has been deleted.

omg, tht is such a shame, he was absolutely amazing with tech, helped me find both my laptop and phone

what laptop u got

acer aspire 5 ryzen 7 256ssd 8gb ram

Bluewolf has decided to leave TSR, if you see a username change to usernameXXXXXXX (a bunch of numbers) it means the account has been deleted.

did u up the RAM on that yourself?

if u dont mind saying, which shop did u get it?

i got mine on argos however they no longer sell it on there, however argos do do other acer products. i love a good acer laptop! (always had acer)