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I need a laptop for entry level programming (small projects) in Java, SQL, PHP and various other languages, as well as various image editing tasks with photos smaller than 12 MP. I've done some initial research, and this laptop, with a Celeron N3060, 4 GB of RAM and 500 GB SSD seemes to be the best I could afford with my budget of € 300.
Is this sufficient for the uses mentioned above, and is there better hardware that I could get for around this price?
I recommend the Thinkpad X230, avalible on Amazon refurbished for € 273.71. It has an i5 3320M, 8 GB of RAM and 320 GB of hard disk space.
While the N3060 is a relatively recent processor with a respectable boost clock speed, it is based off the Braswell architecture, part of Intel's low power Atom designs. That means despite the apparently high clock speed, the performance of the CPU is quite low, perhaps achieving half to a quarter of the performance of even the older quad cores, such as the i5 3320M. While it is a snappy processor for things like light web browsing, it will definitely feel the strain and start to lag once you start editing photos.
The 8 GB of RAM is another significant advantage, even on Linux, and especially if you plan to use the more resource intensive Windows (to which it comes with a licence for) at all. With 4 GB of RAM, basic multitasking can be difficult, and as a beginner programmer myself, I can't tell you how helpful it is to have a few tabs of Stackoverflow or MDN open in the background. While 4 GB might be sufficient if you shepherd your RAM carefully, many times, your OS will start to venture into swap, again increasing lagginess.
Overall, the ThinkPads generally have better build quality than the IdeaPads, as they are the premium lineup. The X series especially, along with the T and W series, are the highest quality, professional grade laptops.
