The best cheap laptop I could find for mobile and portable operations! Just this week I picked up a cheap HP Stream 11 laptop for mobile and portable operation. I’m tired of lugging my 6 lb. laptop back and forth between the house, camper, vehicle and outdoors. I can leave this new one in the camper. The HP Stream 11 is a small 11″ notebook with great battery life and it only weighs 2.5 lbs. It came with Windows 10 Home (I replaced with fresh install of Windows 10). See my other cheap laptop choice below.

My Cheap Laptop – HP Stream 11

On Ebay they run anywhere between $50 used and $175 new. On Amazon $175 (used & new from $111). At Walmart $109 refurbished (where I got mine). The newer models have 4 GB of RAM and most come with a 32 GB eMMC hard drive. There is a more expensive 64 GB model.

The older models come with just 2 GB of RAM and the 32 GB hard drive.

There are complaints about the 32 GB hard drive because it doesn’t have enough free space to do the Windows updates. (I remember people complaining because they were forced to install Windows updates. Maybe this is the solution 🙂  ).

To resolve that I used the Windows Media Creation Tool and installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 which ended up taking less HD space. There’s no HP bloatware!

Inserting a micro SD Card will increase storage, but the SD Card cannot be used to update Windows (crazy).

Linux loads on it! I tried Linux Mint and the only issue was the WIFI. I am sure there is a solution to it. So as a Linux notebook it should work great.

HP Stream 11 Specs:

• 11.6″ display
  LED Backlight, HD Anti-Glare Display
• Intel Celeron N3060 dual-core processor
  1.60GHz (with Max Turbo Speed of 2.48GHz)
• 4GB DDR3L SDRAM system memory
• 32GB eMMC drive
• 10 hours of battery life
• Intel HD Graphics 400
• Weight: 2.57 lbs
  Thin design you can easily take on the road
• 802.11ac Wireless LAN
• microSD card reader
• Bluetooth
• 1 x USB 3.1 port, 1 x USB 2.0 port, 1 x HDMI port, 1 x headphone/microphone jack

HP Stream Likes and Dislikes

Likes: I like the screen, touchpad, battery life and weight. It is fast enough for the basics and it has 2 USB ports!

Dislike: Color and cheap plastic feel. It’s growing on me though. Small hard drive.

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Just the Basic Ham Software

I just have some basic software on it now, N3FJP AC Contact Log, N1MM Logger+, Fldigi and Elecrafts KX2 Utility. These are small programs and run very well on the HP Stream. I’ll try HRD and DXLab Suite at some point.

You’ll be seeing more of it in my YouTube videos!

Cheap Laptop and Other Choices

There are lots of other ones out there and some less expensive than the HP Stream. I read reviews and decided on the Stream because I know HP will stand behind their warranty. I’ve used it before  😉 HP is a reliable brand name.

Video Update 10-21-2018

Thank you!

A big thanks to subscribers and everyone who posts questions and comments with ideas and suggestions. I sincerely appreciate it and hope this website helps Ham operators.

If you have a question or suggestion, please comment below. I will do my best to answer it and your experience will help others as well.

Do you have a dedicated laptop for portable use and if so what make is it?

73,

Rich, K0PIR

P.S. If you are on Instagram, you can follow me there. See @ham-radio-with-k0pir-8d62a2.ingress-earth.ewp.live

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