Indeed, the one I linked is essentially the second generation of their remodel. The first gen was actually pretty recent, like last spring. It came out as a winner at CES last year because of its very small bezel and the fact that it has a smaller footprint than a MacBook Air but the same size screen.

This newer model updates the processor to the latest Skylake line, and adds a USB C port (with charging support, if I'm reading the specs correctly).


There's nothing wrong with that device if it meets your requirements. As someone who does tech support for residential clients, that's a philosophy I've come to understand deeply. There's plenty of gadgets that I love and use that I wouldn't recommend to 90% of my customers. I find out what they want to do first, then figure out what would fit that need and that situation. If you only need to browse the web, send some emails, and create some documents, there's absolutely no problem with that laptop you linked. The fact is that the cheapest computers these days are finally capable of doing everything that most people need. Heck, I've even set up a couple HP Stream laptops for people with kids, and those things are surprisingly capable! I think the single major complaint I have about them is that they need more disk space, but for $179 it's hard to complain. I bought one that does nothing but run my home automation system, and it's fantastic at that.


As previously stated, I need enough to run a video game at decent resolution and framerate. I don't know for certain, but I'd be willing to bet that the Asus you linked to would choke terribly on SimCity (the new one, I'm sure it'd play the original just fine ).


That's tough to say, but of course the point is that I need the power now, so I'm fine going for it. It's also tough to define "better" when we're talking about things like build quality vs size and weight along with all the specs.