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Show HN: I made a website even my tech un-savvy parents can use to find a laptop (easylaptopfinder.com)

11 points by bazil376 ↗ HN
Whenever my parents need a new laptop, they ask me for a recommendation because they’re not very tech savvy. Last time around, I had a realization that I’m fairly algorithmic with my recommendations: I gather information about their preferences and functional needs and then match those to options I can find online.

This website (https://easylaptopfinder.com) attempts to provide a simple UI to intake information about what someone needs and apply the results to a matching algorithm against a list of products. I think it’s cool because sites like Amazon have tons of options but very little in the way of an intuitive UI for people who don’t know what the heck a dedicated vs integrated GPU is or how much RAM they need to do their jobs.

Technically, this is just a single page app on static hosting. The product details come form a JSON file that I periodically refresh using the Amazon Product Advertising API (inspired by the diskprices site that was recently posted online!).

I am definitely still working out the kinks in a few different ways: handling different OS needs, improving the way I discover products and update prices/out-of-stock, figuring out weighting and sorting better, and other UI considerations (I’m definitely not a designer). Anyway, I would appreciate any thoughts you have on the site!

11 comments

[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 27.9 ms ] thread
peterkonsz
Great idea with the static JSON file. Also I like the filtering is nice and zippy because it's all happening client-side (according to lack of activity in my network tab).
pcloadletter_
The "zippy" client stuff comes at a cost: my browser has to download ~150kb of javascript to make this website work. Not as bloated as many sites but more JS than is truly needed for this sort of thing. Likely framework bloat.

Edit: I should say of course you can have zippy client-side stuff without the bloat (for example: just filter the JSON object and update the DOM yourself without a framework!). So it doesn't _really_ come at a cost, just typically the most expedient way a reactive UI is put together uses a framework like React.

misterrpink
yea this will become a problem at scale but nothing that can't be fixed
misterrpink
Wait I don't see a payload coming in on page load. OP might just have hardcoded json objects into client side
bazil376
This is kind of correct, but hardcoded sounds a bit worse than it actually is. Basically a cron job updates the JSON file and injects it as a JS object into the bundle
jotaen
150K worth of JS doesn’t seem too bad in my eyes, considering the level of interactivity here (not just for the filtering, but also for the input dialog). Almost half of the 150K is actual data, which is embedded into the JS file directly.

To put things into perspective: the preview images are around 20–60K each, so if you scroll the entire list, you end up downloading ~5M. If at all, this is where I’d start to look at in terms of optimising bandwidth.

pcloadletter_
I did not realize half the payload was the data itself!
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stevenicr
I got some results.. scrolled a bit.. did ctrl+f -> Backlit

interesting that is goes up or down a few chunks, but does not go all the way up to the top.. if I scroll more and then redo the ctrl-f then it does find and highlight the cheaper ones that have backlit in the descriptions..

suggest adding more sliders for things like price and ram,

Also no way to know if others have a backlit keys but just not showing in the short description, that would be a nice checkbox to toggle, along with remove all that have 8gb ram - and remove all lenovo.

Also if it's amazon, then remove all that are third party sellers - I wouldn't let my parents buy a computer or battery from a third party seller on amazon or walmart or anywhere else.

random thoughts, hope they help make it better

AstroJetson
I like the idea. I'd like to be able to pick the number of USB ports (mouse, headphones, memory stick). Or to check if it has a inbuilt disk.

I'd like to be able to select vendors, for example I would not buy an HP on a dare. (See HP ink license and look at the HP power connector on laptops).

DecentRecruiter
This potentially solves another critical problem.

It's a nightmare for less savvy (generally older) people to evaluate any product, due to the proliferation of SEO tactics. It's especially harmful in cases where the price is tied to the complexity of the product.

For instance, my parents click sponsored Google results all the time. Sure, part of it is naivete, but it's also avoidance of the mental gymnastics necessary for the non-digital native generation to understand the constantly evolving SEO game.