Inexpensive Laptop for a Student Artist

[Rockhopper]

Back-to-school and unexpected life expenses are ballooning, and today I realized that the full-time college student will need the laptop he and younger sib have been sharing. 

Younger sib (14) has two outside (in person) classes that require checking in and turning in assignments online. Obviously she'll need some sort of word processing too. I use OpenOffice but she's not a fan -- she'd prefer Microsoft Office/Word but I'm not sure that'll be in the cards.

She's an artist and needs/wants to get back to digital art - her plan is art school (she thinks design rather than fine arts for the financial stability). She has a drawing tablet and up until now has used free or affordable drawing programs like PaintToolSAI and Krita. My dh would like her to have Photoshop (because industry standard?) but she isn't interested and doesn't think it's necessary -- she says that there are professionals using the programs she likes, too. I *could* add her (anticipated) laptop to my Photoshop subscription but obviously that's an extra expense, and Photoshop greatly increases the needed processing power and speed.

Is there any way I can make a Chromebook work for her/her needs? Or is there something else workable at about a Chromebook price point? She's young and has good eyes so screen size isn't as big a deal to her as it would be to me, but monitor quality needs to be at least decent. 

I'm willing to consider used but don't know how to go about finding and verifying a used computer purchase.

Oh, NOT Apple/Mac please!

[Um_2_4]

I would look at refurbished on ebay. I have bought several off there, Reading the specs of photoshop (I used adobe illustrator before), I would look for a quad core, 8gb ram laptop with windows 10 and at least a 500gb hd. I say quad core so it will last longer. I would not go below 8gb of ram. The hard drive you could go lower and she uses cloud storage if needed. 

I was thinking to get a chromebook, but decided not to because no parental controls really. I mean you can block sites, etc. But no time limits, etc.

Plus I'm not sure a chromebook would do what you are wanting.

 

Here's one for $240: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Fast-Lenovo-X230-13-Windows-10-Home-Laptop-Quad-Core-i7-2-9GHz-8GB-RAM-500GB-HD/253685835754?hash=item3b10daa7ea%3Ag%3Ak-AAAOSwlHJbNTZA&_sacat=0&_nkw=quad+core+8gb+ram+windows+10+laptop&_from=R40&rt=nc&_trksid=m570.l1313

This is only dual core and should work: https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-8460P-14-Laptop-Windows-10-Dual-Core-i5-2-5Ghz-8GB-RAM-320GB-HD-WiFi/352148705700?epid=140701013&hash=item51fdb2d1a4%3Ag%3AFC4AAOSw1ZBUwAgt&_sop=15&_sacat=0&_nkw=i5+8gb+ram+windows+10+laptop&LH_BIN=1&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0#viTabs_0

 

[Rockhopper]

1 hour ago, WendyAndMilo said:

You can have two laptops on one adobe account so there wouldn't be any cost there...unless you already have two laptops with photoshop.  There are a lot of artists that use your daughter's favorite programs, but Photoshop is a useful thing to put on her resume.  But being only 14, she's got plenty of time.

I would compare the laptops that you are looking at to the requirements for photoshop.  If it can handle that, then the other programs would be fine on it. https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/system-requirements.html

 

Thank you! I hadn't investigated the fine print -- this is wonderful news!

 

[Rockhopper]

15 minutes ago, Um_2_4 said:

I would look at refurbished on ebay. I have bought several off there, Reading the specs of photoshop (I used adobe illustrator before), I would look for a quad core, 8gb ram laptop with windows 10 and at least a 500gb hd. I say quad core so it will last longer. I would not go below 8gb of ram. The hard drive you could go lower and she uses cloud storage if needed. 

I was thinking to get a chromebook, but decided not to because no parental controls really. I mean you can block sites, etc. But no time limits, etc.

Plus I'm not sure a chromebook would do what you are wanting.

 

Here's one for $240: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Fast-Lenovo-X230-13-Windows-10-Home-Laptop-Quad-Core-i7-2-9GHz-8GB-RAM-500GB-HD/253685835754?hash=item3b10daa7ea%3Ag%3Ak-AAAOSwlHJbNTZA&_sacat=0&_nkw=quad+core+8gb+ram+windows+10+laptop&_from=R40&rt=nc&_trksid=m570.l1313

This is only dual core and should work: https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-8460P-14-Laptop-Windows-10-Dual-Core-i5-2-5Ghz-8GB-RAM-320GB-HD-WiFi/352148705700?epid=140701013&hash=item51fdb2d1a4%3Ag%3AFC4AAOSw1ZBUwAgt&_sop=15&_sacat=0&_nkw=i5+8gb+ram+windows+10+laptop&LH_BIN=1&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0#viTabs_0

 

Sold! My lands, what a perfect solution! My very own personal shopper! Thank you so much -- just hit buy it now on the lenovo and going to bed with a problem solved!

[Um_2_4]

1 hour ago, Rockhopper said:

Sold! My lands, what a perfect solution! My very own personal shopper! Thank you so much -- just hit buy it now on the lenovo and going to bed with a problem solved!

Lol! Glad to help.

[lailasmum]

My daughter is very much the same and does a lot of digital art and animation. You might want to check out all the free student versions of software. My dd uses autosketch a lot and you can get a free student membership to the full version of that and their other software. 

[6packofun]

20 hours ago, WendyAndMilo said:

 

I would compare the laptops that you are looking at to the requirements for photoshop.  If it can handle that, then the other programs would be fine on it. https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/system-requirements.html

 

 

Absolutely this. You don't want to be stuck with a laptop that freaks out trying to run Photoshop.

[Farrar]

My young digital artist found Affinity to be a good gateway before Photoshop (actually he still prefers it, but he can use both). It's massively cheaper and does nearly as much.