Which PC Platform is the Best at This link?

http://atlanta.craigslist.org/search/sys

Which of the PC platforms on this link is the best deal? I need it simply as a test platform and want the best price to performance ratio but am not informed well enough about the various models to make a proper decision.

 

There is a ton of random electronicy things at that link. The computers are cheap/expensive winders/Mac, portable and desktop.

What kind of test platform are you building? Do you have specific platform needs you are testing? I'd go as old and slow as you intend to support.

I gotta ask..., are you posting this as a joke of some sort? I wouldn't expect this type of question from you.

 

I am not a PC guy at all and up to my ears in alligators so have little time to check out what a Lenovo 150 or whatever is capable of. I see these type of questions here all the time so when browsing my first instinct was to post it here and let the usual suspects pontificate so i can make a decision based on their input. Many here know all the intimate details and performance characteristics that I am just not familiar with. I am buying second hand as I will not be using it very much except as the testing platform for some apps i need to build for a client. They aren't buying it for me so I want to pay as little as possible but not get a turkey. I kind of appreciate your asking me if this is a joke. It shows some respect for my capabilities But as i said. I have been on macs since 1994 about 99.9% of the time. The times I wasn't and had them handed to me by companies the damned things would blue screen on me out of the box or glitch out in the middle of a project, decide the file extension belonged to another app after 3 months of development killing 15K worth of work that could not be retrieved.

 

Oh.. Gotcha! Sorry, I read 'PC' and assumed personal computers in general, which is why I thought you might be joking. In that case, I have no useful advice on the matter whatsoever. I'm a Mac guy as well. I do have a Winders partition on my Mac I use for couple of applications that are win only, but otherwise I make every effort to avoid it.

 

Is Windows 10 free now? I know I can go look but what the heck. I am on chat support currently for other items
edit : Yes .. apparently for free. I hope I have enough room for a partition.

 

Go search the engine for BizSpark, if they still do that (???) and get most of the entire MS SW stack for free. If you already own Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 Windows 10 is free.

HW wise, any 1st gen or later Intel i3 with the Intel Graphics GPU and 4GB RAM if you do no light baking is sufficient for targeting mobile and desktops. You should be able to find one easily on eBay for $150 or less, especially in a place as big as Atlanta. You'll note that you'll almost surely want to replace the magnetic SATA HD with an sufficient size SATA SSD with will cost more than the laptop at about $150 - $250 on Amazon.

Eventually, if cost is a concern you'll want to dual boot a Mac Mini with 8GB or more RAM, whenever they get around to releasing a model based on Skylake.

 

I downloaded Virtual Box and Windows 10. I will see how they work together. I don't have enough room to make a partition but enough to run these and the one piece of software I need to run.