I have a cheap wired gaming headset for video conferencing - it's more comfortable to wear for long periods of time than my earbuds, and the mic works better. The one thing I wish I'd looked more closely at is the weight, because after a couple of hours they do start to feel pretty heavy on the top of my head.

I use a gaming headset, too. It's comfortable, and mine is pretty light.

There are zero cameras available here. My doctors all want them for their existing (old) computers, but end up buying laptops because there are no cameras anywhere.

I've been finding that, at least for teaching, the camera really isn't all that necessary. I find the headshots in a meeting distracting, and my students probably don't need to see my ugly face. OTOH, I do have a couple of lab demos that I am filming using my Lumix, but those will be uploaded to the streaming server.

My first attempt went okay. I couldn't figure out why the camera was giving me such a short maximum record time (only 8+ minutes). I managed to finish my first demo with 3 seconds left to spare. Then when I moved the file off the SD card onto my laptop, I noticed that the file was a 2GB .MOV. Next time I will crank the resolution down a little.

Heya -- with all this work from home, I've found that I'm pushing little Macbook Air to the fringes of its capabilities. I need a Windows laptop that has sufficient specs to run a large QuickBooks file alongside multiple complex Excel spreadsheets, and that can handle remoting in to workstations smoothly.

Any suggestions? I'm only working half-time freelance, as I'm disabled, so my means are constrained. Suggestions or recommendations would be very helpful. An older laptop model would be fine as long as it has the specs to do the above.

Thanks!

Woot currently has some good deals on Dell and Lenovo and a few other models that are refurbish. Today's main deal is even a 2019 MacBook Pro.

[link]

Erika, I've had good luck with Dell laptops, and Lenovo ones are good too.

You probably want an intel i5 or i7, and ideally 16 GB of RAM to handle that spreadsheet load, though 8GB would probably work okay in a financial pinch. You also probably want a solid state drive.

You can shop dell refurbished laptops at [link] . My luck with that has been solid.

This scratch and dent 15" inspiron is $650, which is a good price for that machine. [link] Only 8Gb of RAM, unfortunately, but RAM is pricey right now so going up to 16GB pushes the price up a good bit. This at least has an extra slot and should be upgradeable if need be.

Here is a brand-new Inspiron laptop that would handle your stuff, though its screen is not great (low resolution, especially after a macbook): [link] but, hey, it's $550 new!

Ooh, this laptop has only 8GB of RAM, but the more I think about it the more I think that would be okay. And it has a much nicer display than the previous one. [link]

Thanks ND and Gris. Gris, I don't think my meager budget will stretch that far; I may end up having to go the Craigslist route and see if I can find a decent machine.

What about this Dell Latitude on Woot?

[link]

The specs seem fine on that. The screen is tiny but I guess if you are coming from a MacBook air you probably won't mind. Probably a fine choice.