Help me pick a college laptop

I'd recommend a 250-500GB SSD for fast boot times for meetings. 15" screen. 16GB RAM for engineering. 8th Gen i7.

I'd also recommend a large monitor and nice keyboard and mouse for your place. You spend a lot of time on it.

I'd recommend Apple but their MBP has been spotty quality keyboard since 2015 and the touchbar is a gimmick.

PC manufacturers are hit or miss even among the same manufacturer. Dell is pretty good. Lenovo and HP are also good.

I would get a Costco membership and buy your laptop there (or online) with the Costco CC for 4 year warranty included.

Do not get a gaming laptop.

You do not want to play League or CS:GO or Fortnite with your dorm mates.

NO!

As long as you have a laptop with Intel HD 500 Graphics, you will pretty much want to spend your days outside or doing stuff.

Thinkpad X1 Carbon/T480 or Dell XPS 13 will be the best in terms of durability or speed. Get one of the good ones, not a cheap one. Huawei's Matebook reviews well too but it might be a bit of uncharted territory.

kid from PA wrote:

Thinkpad X1 Carbon/T480 or Dell XPS 13 will be the best in terms of durability or speed. Get one of the good ones, not a cheap one. Huawei's Matebook reviews well too but it might be a bit of uncharted territory.

XPS 15, my bad

I don’t know about any computer lasting 5 years.

dell xps

This many responses and nobody has said quad core? Make sure it's a quad core. And not this 2 cores with hyperthreading crap.

Stay away from the home editions of Windows.

That is get only

Windows 10 Pro, or Windows 7 Pro.

You have more control over the operating system.

Computorz wrote:

1TB Hard Drive

8gb RAM

The fact that a 1 TB hard drive is a requirement is a joke. My University said the same thing. Go with 256gb to 512gb SSD

I agree with the fact that you don't need to buy a gaming laptop. If you don't already have a desktop built for gaming, then you're probably not the type of person who will spend their free time gaming (a million better things to do, like increasing your mileage). That being said, if you're going to a math heavy engineering field, you might be interested in getting a PC with a good graphics card (or invest in one later), as it could be useful if you go the Computer Science or Industrial Engineering route (linear programming, machine learning, artificial intelligence all benefit from having a good graphics card).

Fastest boot time and best battery life = chromebook. Nothing else compares.

But, probably can't run what you might need for engineering, that is if you need to install some specialty software or something. I run Fusion360 on mine though with no problems.

Avoid windows 10. It's a disgusting piece of junk.

I work in a company with a bunch of engineers and they all use Lenovo W530-550. They are what you want.

Not so fast bro wrote:

Fastest boot time and best battery life = chromebook. Nothing else compares.

But, probably can't run what you might need for engineering, that is if you need to install some specialty software or something. I run Fusion360 on mine though with no problems.

Avoid windows 10. It's a disgusting piece of junk.

Chromebook is a no go. You won't be able to run Matlab and I'm 99.9% sure you'll need to. Also Windows is not a piece of junk. I certainly prefer a Unix based OS for terminal use, but not enough to completely separate myself from Windows.

If you have a Costco where you live or will be going to school get this:

https://www.costco.com/Dell-XPS-13-Touchscreen-Laptop---Intel-Core-i7---4K-Ultra-HD.product.100403152.html

XPS9370, i7-8550U, 512 SSD, 16GB Ram, 4k touch screen- just not sure if you want/need bigger then 13.3"

I believe it is $200 off with your membership. You also get 1 year of O365 included and 1TB OneDrive. Their customer service is really good and return policy and additional warranty (on top of manufacturer) is nice.

Not sure if it has Home or Pro but if you need Pro (which I doubt you do since you are asking for advice here) the upgrade is $100 on the Microsoft Store.

kid from PA wrote:

Thinkpad X1 Carbon/T480 or Dell XPS 13 will be the best in terms of durability or speed. Get one of the good ones, not a cheap one. Huawei's Matebook reviews well too but it might be a bit of uncharted territory.

I got a thinkpad t460 (older version of the t480) for law school and it kicks ass

Best keyboard I have ever used on a laptop (i don't even bother using my external keyboard anymore) and battery that last for literal days. I have used my computer all day, forgot to plug in over night and still had enough power to get through the next day without charging.

I've had mine for 2 years and it still looks and performs like new

Star wrote:

I don’t know about any computer lasting 5 years.

Macbook Pro. I have a 2010 model still going strong, although I did just buy a new one about three weeks ago for travel as the new ones are half the weight.

As far as specs go, you can configure those specs yourself, but if you want to save money you can buy the ram and hard drive separately and apparently it's easy to swap the parts

Oh Please wrote:

Star wrote:

I don’t know about any computer lasting 5 years.

Macbook Pro. I have a 2010 model still going strong, although I did just buy a new one about three weeks ago for travel as the new ones are half the weight.

Also, you can dual boot Windows if you really have a need.

How much experience do you have with dual booting? I'm constantly running into problems with my Windows/Ubuntu set up. Mostly because major Windows updates overwrite the default bootloader and then I'm basically locked out of my Ubuntu instance without performing actions that are beyond my knowledge of operating systems.

Nevertheless, I now have Windows on a Solid State Drive and also Ubuntu on an HDD, but somehow I've managed to install Ubuntu without installing Grub. I actually have files I want from my HDD but I can't reach them any longer.

Really wish they taught more about Operating Systems in school. :(

Why do you need an i7??