Laptop advise pls

[digga]

My daughter has now sold her iPad, and is looking for a decent laptop for her studies.

Can anybody recommend one from the vast range thats out there.?

She will be needing some software as well i would imagine - Word , Excel and powerpoint may come in handy i would guess..

cheers

p.s - she won't be wanting exotica

 

[Paul Everton]

Most laptop these days will suffice for her studies... Just depends on your budget too? You can pick up a laptop nowadays for £400 which is as powerful as a desktop.... If she had the funds A MacBook Air would serve well and is light weight too.... Microsoft office will sort her out for software.... Hope this helps

 

[STUBBS]

look into student discounts if she is entitled to them

 

[richie]

Smart office means you won't need any software, if it is a windoze machine I bought an I7 two years ago and I believe I7 is still the top dog so I made a good investment, personally if I were up for a machine these days I would go for an I5 SSD thingy... Slimline and cool but certainly not a MAC
If you want a MAC just try Linux basically the same thing but not connected to Itunes malarchy.

 

[stolzy]

Smart office means you won't need any software, if it is a windoze machine I bought an I7 two years ago and I believe I7 is still the top dog so I made a good investment, personally if I were up for a machine these days I would go for an I5 SSD thingy... Slimline and cool but certainly not a MAC
If you want a MAC just try Linux basically the same thing but not connected to Itunes malarchy.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Mac OS X is not remotely like Linux and has no connection with it.

 

[richie]

I did not say it was, but it's user interface is basically the same thing... It is only an opinion, speaking for myself Windows eight seems to be pretty much feking useless so unless things change in the future when my current machine is feked I don't know what I will do, maybe a top dog Android smart Pad with keyboard, who knows, things are moving on so fast no point worrying about it for at least another three years. I kept my last windows laptop for eight years was still working fine when I upgraded. It is going to be shipped off to Africa to make a Senegalese happy....

 

[RedRick Esq.]

Processor and memory (not storage) should be your guide
Get the best (bigest memory 8G should suffice) and I7 processor or equivalent and you shouldnt go wrong. SSd is also good but storage isnt as huge

I like Lenovo as decent spec and value but each to their own

 

[richie]

I never store data on my machines anymore it is all on the cloud or external drives, makes the machine faster. IMHO. I store pictures on my laptop for a month and then move them off, no files over a month old and all office type files dropbox, works for me. I have 700GB of free space that I will never use so when my HD does burn out in will go a SSD drive

 

[Christos x]

One word.....

MacBook!

I had to buy a new laptop the other month to replace my old Dell (10yrs old). I bought a Toshiba blah blah blah running Windows 8 that was approx £400. Got it home, turned it on, waited an age for Windows to install, used it for approx 3 hours.......ARRRRGGGHHHHHH! Horrific!

It completely re affirmed why I moved from Windows PC to Mac years ago. I had flash backs to many many days of hair pulling and screaming at a Windows machine while trying to configure Wifi, stop auto updates, de frag, re installing operating systems, re install software, anti virus warnings, trojan horses, malware etc etc etc.

Packed up the Toshiba windows 8 nightmare, took it back to the shop and ordered a 13" Macbook Air. Bliss! Yeah is cost twice as much but it's solid built, no HDD to go kaput and it doest run Windows. It will save me a huge amount of ball ache in the future so the extra cost over 8 - 10yrs is a no brainer

Do yourself and your daughter a favour....MacBook

No PC based machines were harmed during the making of this post

 

[cookie]

an i7 is overkill for most applications unless doing processor intensive stuff like video rendering. saving a fair wedge by getting an i5 seems like a good bet to me

 

[RedRick Esq.]

an i7 is overkill for most applications unless doing processor intensive stuff like video rendering. saving a fair wedge by getting an i5 seems like a good bet to me

May be overkill but i like to have more than i need just in case i ever need it !

 

[digga]

Thanks chaps …. many good comments and views.

I have a MacAir - but i'm not prepared to lend her that …

Good call on 'the cloud' storage and keep pics fpor a month and clear them out.. basic housekeeping nowadays i suppose with the advent of SSD and 'the cloud' of course.

I'll take a look at the Lenovo range .

 

[Fluffmeister]

Listening to Mac converts is like listening to Ex Smokers

There are a lot of machines out there for reasonable money, I bought my daughter a Lenovo G450 from PC World of all places a few weeks ago and it's fine. It came in at £339 at the time, is a Core I3, 8GB Ram, 1TB 7200RPM Samsung HD, Intel HD 4000 on board graphics, GBit Lan, N Series WiFi and running Windows 8.1.

Rock solid and stable, plastic but great build quality, Core I3 is more than enough for school work and I have dropped Office 2013 on it, she loves it.

 

[bowser]

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Mac OS X is not remotely like Linux and has no connection with it.

Not quite true, Mac OS X is based on BSD/Nexstep/Darwin which are a developmet of UNIX, Linux is a development of UNIX although a different development. Graphical interfaces are different and the engine under the bonnet are as differnt a ford engine and a GM engine however they are both internal combustion same is true of Mac OS and Linux they are very certainly "remotely alike" akin to cousins having the same grandparents.


I went through this before christmas looking for a laptop for my wife, ended up with Toshiba SATELLITE P845T-10J i3-3227U, which I got for about £400, 640gb HD, DVD drive, Card reader and touch screen. Its been a great laptop and she has been very pleased with it. It did come with Windows 8 which is a pain in the arse to some and others love it, personaly I hate the damn think but it does work very well, I simply put classic shell on the system which is free ware and it looks and works like windows 7. Touch screen is nice and works well, aluminum case feels rugged and quality and its stood up well to the abuse of carring it round on a motorcycle, good battery life too.

I dont like windows 8 but to give it credit, apart from the god awful interface it does work well. You say you looking for somthing for a student, and therefore student discount software should be available for office and the like, however check to see if there is any other software needed, I know that where my Old man used to lecture they had alll sorts of special software for the course and it would only run on windows so that is somthing you need to keep in mind, do they need an optical drive so things you can use a usb stick for most stuff, but may need an optical drive, and lots of laptops dont have them now, again keep in mind.

I love the Apple GUI and run it on a home built PC. But would steer clear of apple laptop computers, they look lovley and are well built but I wont pay the price, same components from anyone else is less than 1/3 the price
No optical drive except on the 13 inch pro, and none of the components are upgradeable, so you have to buy the spec up front and pay through the nose for it.

 

[Bendy toy]

Ive used Windows for years but they always get slower and slower until they get chucked out before they actually stop working. On the other hand mine have not been especially reliable. Both desktops had motherboards fail. The Dell laptop was top spec but obsolete very quickly due to inadequate memory. The Samsung NC10 Netbook was excellent value and good quality but Windows updates made it unusably slow. It went well with Ubuntu until the screen got broken.

Last year, sick of the programmed obsolescence of Windows, I turned to Apple with a 13" MacBook Pro. The quality is great, performance is good and it's Appleness does not get in the way. Its certainly more money to buy, but not a lot more than a decent spec Windows tool. In the long run a Mac should be less cost as they hold their resale value. It gets rebooted infrequently, usually its just put to standby.

Only downside is weight - the solid metal case is a bit heavy but a very small price to pay IMHO. Like any laptop, it needs a good quality padded storage bag.

 

[Fluffmeister]

Last year, sick of the programmed obsolescence of Windows,

It's going to go into a Mac vs PC thread

I turned to Apple and bought a 27" iMac, the worst steaming pile of shit I have ever owned in my entire life (And I once owned a VF750). Applecare was a joke as well, the thing could find it's own way to the "geniuses" in the Trafford Centre Apple store, 2 replacements later, 1 logic board, 1 graphics card, 2 super drives and a hard disk failed. After the second replacement landed (Which was perfect, thank god!), it mostly stayed in the box and got sold.

My daily use laptop is a Dell XPS 12, Core I7, 16GB RAM 1920 x 1080 screen, 256 GB SSD, Carbon Fibre and Ally construction running Windows 8.1. I suffered a bit of light bleed on the panel, Dell business support sent an engineer to Inverness where I was working onsite, and switched out the panel whilst I was working on an Exchange Migration.

There's nowt wrong with Apple, but then again, there's Nowt wrong with Windows, I sometimes get tired of the Apple Fanboy approach to things and inevitability the "Windoze" word will drop in each to their own of course

 

[stolzy]

I did not say it was, but it's user interface is basically the same thing... It is only an opinion, speaking for myself Windows eight seems to be pretty much feking useless so unless things change in the future when my current machine is feked I don't know what I will do, maybe a top dog Android smart Pad with keyboard, who knows, things are moving on so fast no point worrying about it for at least another three years. I kept my last windows laptop for eight years was still working fine when I upgraded. It is going to be shipped off to Africa to make a Senegalese happy....

In what way is the user interface 'basically the same thing'? Linux can be installed with lots of different user interfaces - doubtless there is one that looks a bit like Mac OS X, but equally there is one that looks like Windows 98.

 

[richie]

I bought a Mac a few years back at the same time as a laptop, prices were the same the mac was not as fast as the laptop and did not last as long. I run Ubuntu on an old netbook it looks pretty much the same as OSX at least in my eyes.

No big deal really I don't care what the OP buys it is his choice.