Looking for a laptop under 550$ for normal use ( web browsing, skype, office etc.)

Pentakillz

Estimable
Jul 15, 2014
3
0
4,510
Hello Tom's Hardware community.
My sister asked me to look for a laptop for her under 550$. She doesn't play games on laptops. So nothing powerful would be required. Youtube, Skype, Word, watching streams or movies are things she uses her laptop for. Now I found a relatively good one at office Depot which is the Toshiba Satelite L55 - B5267 with a 15.6" Screen, 6 GB memory and 750 GB hardrive and an Intel Core i3-4025U processor. So the specs are enough but what bothers me is that it has only one USB 2.0 port but two UBS 3.0 ports. Are 3.0 USB ports also compatible with USB 2.0 devices or does that not work? That's the only thing that would bother her I think other than that it seems like a good deal. Maybe you guys have better deals or could tell me more about the USB 2.0 - 3.0 port issue.
And also here is the link for the laptop on Office Max.
Also a review I found.
 
The Core i3 CPU should be adequate since it runs at 1.9GHz and your sister's needs does not seem to be very demanding. I would not worry about the USB 2.0 port. USB 3.0 devices are backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports. The only major issue is data transfer speed. If you are going to connect an external hard drive, then you want to connect it to a USB 3.0 for faster transfer of data.

The USB 2.0 can be used for things that do not use much data bandwidth like a wireless mouse or it can be used to charge an external device like a cellphone,

 

Pentakillz

Estimable
Jul 15, 2014
3
0
4,510
If I understand correctly, is that the USB 2.0 port can also be used by USB 3.0 devices just that it will perform the same as a USB 2.0 device. Does this is also work the other way around? Let's say my sister would connect a USB 2.0 flashdrive with a USB 3.0 port. Just wanna make sure that she can connect a flashdrive and a mouse at the same time.