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University Laptops
Mai-Kero
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, I'm starting college soon, and my schedule and commute time has me thinking that I really need a laptop so I can avoid driving 20-30 minutes back and forth in between classes if I need to work on something.
I think I'm looking for something fairly cheap, the only stipulations being a large hard-drive, if possible, and high enough specs to ensure I can use Photoshop and word processing programs etc, at a reasonable speed.
So, questions:
Are there any brands I should look for in particular?
Models?
Should I buy directly from their store, or check out Frys/Newegg/BestBuy/etc?
Vista or XP?
How large of a hard-drive can I expect, and should I consider settling for a lower capacity one on the laptop, and getting a large external to go with it?
I think I'm looking for something fairly cheap, the only stipulations being a large hard-drive, if possible, and high enough specs to ensure I can use Photoshop and word processing programs etc, at a reasonable speed.
So, questions:
Are there any brands I should look for in particular?
Models?
Should I buy directly from their store, or check out Frys/Newegg/BestBuy/etc?
Vista or XP?
How large of a hard-drive can I expect, and should I consider settling for a lower capacity one on the laptop, and getting a large external to go with it?
Mai-Kero on
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Otherwise, I'd suggest a laptop with XP Media Center. Driver issues aside, Vista is a resource hog.
Also, ensure that you get at least a gig of ram, even if that means lowering the processor speed to fit within your budget.
Get good integrated graphics if possible. For future posters, what's the newest onboard chipset? Intel GMA x3000?
Have fun.
I believe that is a known problem. Nothing in CS2 was optimized to run well on the Intel Macs. CS2 was for PPC macs, so it's running poorly through a compatibility layer. That's why the Windows side runs fine.
Adobe knew about this, but never bothered to patch it because they were working on CS3 and want you and everyone else to upgrade.
EDIT: As for actual recommendations, I just got a Dell for real cheap, an Inspiron 1501 from the small business section, with huge discounts. For $530 total (after $280 instant discount) which includes shipping and tax, I got this:
AMD Turion TL-50 64 X2
ATI Xpress 1150
1gb Ram
60gb harddrive
8x Dual-layer DVD burner
15.4 inch widescreen 1280x1024 resolution
Pretty good for the price, I think they may still have the deal up, but only in the small business section. These deals come pretty often apparently.
EDIT: Beaten.
As for harddrives, you can't go wrong with getting a 100GB+ drive and if that fills up, get a cheap external.
Is OSX a resource hog in low ram environments?
I had a mac mini with 512 MB of RAM. I experienced slowdown during simple multitasking, which at the time included Skype, Adium, and internet.
To the OP. If you can afford the investment, get two gigs.
Worked for me, worked for my sister. PCs are powerful enough these days that even a $500 one will do, and hey, if you drop it, or it gets stolen, it's not as big of a loss.
These are your only guidelines:
- Avoid Compaq and Sony like the plague.
- HP, Dell, and Lenovo are all fine suggestions.
- Always upgrade the battery whenever possible.
- Get a dual core. Intel Core Duo 2's preferred. Far more power efficient, and more powerful than a celeron or what have you.
- 1 gig of ram is fine. 2 is preferred, but do the upgrade yourself. You can get laptop RAM cheap -- way cheaper than purchase-at-buy-time -- on the 'net, and it's even easier to replace than it is on a desktop -- pretty much all laptops have a unscrewable door at the bottom that just opens up directly into where the new RAM goes. Plug in, enjoy.
Let it be known that I'm a Computer Science student currently working at a Web/Graphic Design and Software Development job for the summer. I'd say that pretty much makes me the most demanding user out there for work related activities, don't you? I run resource intensive software (after effects, photoshop) and am constantly compiling programs all day, then bring it home and watch/burn DVDs without a single hitch, on my $500 "piece of shit" (as I was told when I made the purchase) laptop. Works great. Food for thought.
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All great suggestions, especially about upgrading the battery. Higher capacity batteries are usually only $20-30 more, and they provide several extra hours of use. It's extremely convenient. Also, Dell tends to send out some awesome coupons with the mail/Sunday paper, so check there. Last summer, they had an online offer of $200 off the Inspiron E1505, and I compounded that with a 30% off coupon, and ended up saving about $700 on the whole deal. I was quite pleased.
I'm going to echo this statement. I used to be a PC only kind of guy, but then I tried my friends macbook. Not only is the battery life wonderful on my macbook, (about 5 hours if Im not doing something intensive) but it's all together a very enjoyable experience. You can even upgrade the hard drive on the apple store to be quite large.
Learning about and fiddling with OS X is fun in and of itself, and I really enjoy the feel of the keyboard.
Plus, it looks fricken sexy.
Dell would be my suggestion if you want a cheap laptop that doesn't suck ass. When it comes to low price and still having a decent laptop, Dell is definitely the way to go.
And get teh fucking warranty. Laptops WILL break, and you CANNOT fix them yourself like you can with a desktop. Get the best warranty you can, you will kick yourself later if you don't.
Just like PS CS2, the current version of Office is not a Universal Binary, meaning it's running through a PPC emulation layer. When the new version of Office comes out, it'll be nice and speedy. If you don't need a spreadsheet program, iWork is cheap and good. Pages (PowerPoint) is simply awesome.
The thing about Macs is that though they do start at the $1000 mark and are more expensive than PCs (although not terribly more, after factoring in the $100 student discount and buying your own RAM instead of letting Apple price-gouge you), but you get what you pay for. Even if OS X isn't a plus for you, the design and build quality are superb and AppleCare is one of the best warranty plans on the market.
#1: KNOW WHAT YOU WANT. Seriously, research what programs you're going to be running, and read the hardware requirements. Always get at least slightly above them.
#2: Do research. This is important. Find out if one brand has more lemons on the particular model you're interested in. If so, then just look for a comparable model.
#2.1: Do a research on battery life. I picked up a laptop that had about an hour and a half battery life. I thought it was going to be enough, except that my classes don't have outlets and they last longer than an hour and a half. I cannot stress this enough.
#3: Shop around. No one place has the best deals for laptops. Laptop prices change weekly. Keep your eyes open, and if you see a good price for one... Shop around and see if anyone else beats it. If not, purchase it.
Just a few helpful hints for you. I've been burned buying a laptop before, and I won't ever again.
Good luck!
A friend of mine recently gave me his broken VAIO laptop so that my little sister could use it as a playtoy. The problem with it was that the screen was essentially broken and would cost, according to sony, a grand total of 900 dollars to fix.
I ordered a genuine SONY AC adapter off ebay and a used LCD VAIO screen for a grand total of 150 dollars.
I've been working with this laptop for a while now, with MCE, and it's amazing what it can do. I highly recommend it, even though I know that they are a bit pricy, but ebay is your friend if you shop smartly.
I wouldn't recommend any compaq models, since my girlfriend's compaq laptop is constantly breaking. For example, I've had to fix it for about the tenth time in a year. Also, it seems to me that the laptop is manufactured rather cheaply, since the WLAN adapter is flimsy and broke easily. It's currently held together with a piece of duct tape.
A Macbook is also a smart investment, if you want to invest that much money. If you know anyone who works at Apple, ask them (nicely) if you can use their employee discount. I got mine severely discounted by asking my friend to buy it for me and I simply gave him the money.
Oh, and buy an extra battery. It'll help a lot.
Remember that there is no warranty on the planet that will cover the average shit that happens in at that special time in a person's life. Laptops at school get shit spilled on them or stolen all the time, so the cheaper the better. Mactops are many things, cheap isn't one of them.
1.) If you're not opposed to a Mac you might look into them to see if they meet your criteria for price/power/quality/functionality. You don't mention what you're going to major in. Some majors will want you to use specific software that might be Windows only. If you like a Mac but have this limitation you can look into running Boot Camp or Parallels but you might have to write off a Mac if those wouldn't be workable solutions for you. There's lots of good reasons to get a Mac but they might not apply to you, that's cool.
2.) If you get a PC laptop avoid Vista for now. I can't think of any Vista feature that is worth the absolute hassle of using it at this point. A well maintained XP SP2 system will be just as secure and robust as Vista if not moreso due to more mature drivers and fewer compatibility concerns.
3.) Recoil's suggestion of getting a "shit" laptop on the cheap is not a bad one. A relatively modern laptop has more power than you're going to need for 99% of all situations. Even running something CPU-heavy like Photoshop isn't a problem on modern machines if you've got adequate RAM, a filter or layer render might take two seconds instead of one on a shit machine. Oh noes! The caveat there is the reliability of said shit laptop. If it is a shoddy machine or obscenely heavy it's probably not going to be that worthwhile.
4.) I wouldn't bother with a laptop over about six pounds and more than an inch and a half thick when closed. A lot of cheaper laptops are priced as such because they're behemoths. Carrying about a bigass laptop in a backpack or messenger bag is a real pain in the ass. Trying to use it on your lap or a small bistro table even moreso.
5.) Backup. Backup. Backup. I think laptops are the only type of machines that make sense for college. That being said make backing up your school work a regular thing. Use thumb drives, network shares, e-mail, or whatever but just do it. There will come a time when your computer isn't working right so make sure you can get at your work at all times. It's not too difficult to set up a backup script/app on either Mac or Windows to back up a folder to a thumbdrive every day. Make sure you make regular backups of bulk data like digital photos and music as well. A dropped backpack can mean a dead hard drive, you don't want to lose all recorded memories of your freshman year along with it.
6.) Grab a high capacity battery if your laptop vendor offers one. Good battery life is a must in school. Also get to know whatever laptop you buy. Become intimately familiar with its warranty coverage. This should be a no-brainer but a lot of people walk around thinking their warranty covers dropping their machine into molten lava or some crazy shit. Also know what sort of RAM it takes, what type of power adapter it uses and if you can find a generic replacement if your OEM one ever ends up missing/broken.
7.) Research the shit out of a laptop before buying it (as was suggested). If they're available in a brick and motar store play with them until you feel comfortable with buying it. If at all possible pick it up open and closed to see how heavy and/or balanced it is. A laptop should not tip over backwards if you open the screen to a comfortable position. My step dad has a Lenovo that has a horrible habit of tipping over backwards if the screen is opened too far, if you're not careful such a machine is going to take a tumble and may not survive. Keep performance in mind but make sure you get something that is comfortable to carry around. A shittyily designed laptop with a bunch of flair sticking off the sides is begging to be pulled off a table by a stray sleeve or backpack strap.
the new intel graphics chipset is the x3100 and runs direct x10
fujitsu's are fine, the fujitsu laptop that i had for over 4 years still runs fine with the cd drive crapping out a few years later.. this is just one person's experience of course
on laptops, you can get larger hard drives with slower speeds (5400 rpm) or faster speeds (7200 rpm) with less space. that's the typical tradeoff unless you spend a lot more money to get both features
Personally I'd go for a Macbook, but Lenovo (né IBM) is really decent too.
Vista is better than XP so long as you have at least a gig of ram.
Budget for a new battery, though.
I wound up with a ThinkPad T60p. It wasn't cheap, but I'm very happy with it.
People think this just because Compaq == HP, but yeah, not true. You'd know this if you'd seen as many broken Compaqs as I have.
And Vista is great. Stick with it. All I suggest is on a laptop, turn of Aero, as it sucks up battery life. Otherwise it's fine, a great OS, even better than XP, and over time, will of course get even better as the service packs appear. Ignore the haters.
Also, don't turn of UAC unless it really, really bugs you. It's there for a reason, it makes the PC far more secure.
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It's not a worthless update over Windows XP but with a majority of its extras turned off it's like a Plus! pack for XP. There's still plenty of software that doesn't want to run properly in Vista. It's not necessarily Microsoft's fault and that situation won't exist forever but as of right now it's a problem. If course software doesn't want to run in Vista you're screwed. If your course software runs and it does what you need go ahead and use Vista since you get it with a new system anyways.
Saying Vista is a hard change from XP and that some software won't be compatible is not hating, it's just telling it like it is. It's a nice upgrade over XP but it's got enough really inane/annoying aspects to think twice about using every day.
I'd like to know this too. How compatible is everything? Will old games like Baldur's Gate II/Fallout/System Shock 2 run? Is there an XP compatibility mode?
http://www.iexbeta.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_Vista_Software_Compatibility_List#Heavy_Problems.2C_Currently_Incompatible
I wonder how complete that list is. Dawn of War: Dark Crusade is so awesome. Decisions.
One of the main things that pisses me off about retailers is that you can't buy a better battery with it and if you can, it'll be additional, you're forced to buy the POS 6 cell batteries, and the 9/12 cell on top of that. Whereas by buying direct, you can choose to simply "Upgrade" to the better battery for like 40-50 bucks. In store, you would pay around $100-150 for that.
Edit: And don't buy a laptop for gaming. I thought this was spose to be something you can use to so you don't have to drive back between classes to work on something? Buy a cheap used laptop off craigslist and get a good desktop @ your place for your gaming needs.
Well, yeah, I didn't exactly want some monster laptop for playing Crisis or anything, but a game of Civ IV every now and then would be nice. Nothing particularly demanding, I've been playing it on my current desktop (on a GeForce 5200) so I'm sure I'd be fine with integrated graphics.
We've gotten to that point where even the cheapest of computers are MORE than capable of doing just about every task well. Short of fluid simulations and ray tracing complex scenes. Really, power should not even be your main concern at this point -- it's actually build quality, screen quality, and battery life, things like that, that you should have foremost in your mind.
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the main thing i have to say about discrete (non-integrated) graphics such as my card is that it's bad for battery life. if you value battery life and don't need heavy graphics power (ie: just surfing the web, office applications, etc), then just settle for integrated graphics
ex of integrated vs discrete: http://www.lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=40
I bet DoW works fine now.