Computer Science

[alphabeta]

I'm going to be a freshman in faculty of computer science this year and for sure I will need a laptop to work on here's my question .... What Specs Do I need !!?? I don't want an over kill Laptop I just need one that get the job done ( the next 4 years of studding )

[ZetZet]

Anything above from i5 will do the job. SSD would also make it more pleasing to use.

Just make sure you get 1080p screen. Because 768p is only reasonable at 10-11.6 inches.

[ForsakenLive]

If you can afford it, go for it http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834300141

[alphabeta]

If you can afford it, go for it http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834300141

 

:huh: Not in a million years 

[gilm0re3]

:huh: Not in a million years 

lol

[ForsakenLive]

:huh: Not in a million years 

well, you never talked about budget!

Basically you want something on the light side, with a CPU that doesn't suck, a 1080p screen and a SSD inside. Some people love the Touchscreen feature, some people doesn't care.

If you don't care about the Touchscreen maybe something like this? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314533

And please, buy an SSD for it, specially if you are going to be attending at classes with the notebook!  This 128 GB SSD from sandisk rocks http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171740&cm_re=128_GB_sandisk_ssd-_-20-171-740-_-Product

[alphabeta]

well, you never talked about budget!

Basically you want something on the light side, with a CPU that doesn't suck, a 1080p screen and a SSD inside. Some people love the Touchscreen feature, some people doesn't care.

If you don't care about the Touchscreen maybe something like this? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314533

And please, buy an SSD for it, specially if you are going to be attending at classes with the notebook!  This 128 GB SSD from sandisk rocks http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171740&cm_re=128_GB_sandisk_ssd-_-20-171-740-_-Product

 

So basically the important needs are an i5 at least and 1080p Screen with an SSD  

[MrSuperb]

So basically the important needs are an i5 at least and 1080p Screen with an SSD

budget?

[alphabeta]

budget?

600$

[MrSuperb]

600$

$600 i5, SSD + 1080p ... imho not really possible, unless you buy a used one

also battery life will be shit. (the one thing to aim for when buying a laptop for college)

[alphabeta]

$600 i5, SSD + 1080p ... imho not really possible, unless you buy a used one

also battery life will be shit. (the one thing to aim for when buying a laptop for college)

I was aiming for an i5 with 1366x768 15.6 inch and ssd in the latter upgrades

[CornOnJacob]

I was aiming for an i5 with 1366x768 15.6 inch and ssd in the latter upgrades

What about this from Asus (through XoticPC): http://www.xoticpc.com/asus-x555ladb51-p-7358.html

You can upgrade to an SSD (or a smaller caching SSD), but you really won't find anything under $600 except maybe a Chromebook, and that probably won't have the specs you want anyway (worth a shot though).

[rashdanml]

Focus only on reliability and up the budget to $1000. Then use it to buy a good quality business-grade laptop. Specs are great, and reliability will be rock-solid. If you want battery life too, you can also get that. If the laptop is going to see heavy use, I wouldn't even dream of spending $600. 

 

Thinkpads are a good place to start. The T series (T440p) should be fairly close to a $1000 budget, if not a bit more. 

[Netto]

Speaking as a graduate of this major. Unless you're going to do be doing large machine learning/data mining projects, large hardware simulation projects, or running crawlers/hadoop off the laptop, you can do with lower than i5 without any problems. (I'm still using a core 2 duo centrino from 2009, replaced with dual ssd, still works great).

[WanderingFool]

So ideally you would want an i5, ssd and a 1080p screen.

 

With that said, I understand that budget can play a big factor (It would be great to budget $1000, but realistically not everyone can afford that budget)....so let me tell you my specs (I made it through CS, without too many headaches).

 

i5-460m

HDD 500GB

15" screen 768p screen

It was a while back but I managed to get it on sale for $550 (I found a really good sale).

 

To be honest I think SSD > CPU > screen size...and anything in the i5 series is probably good enough for school.

 

A trick that you could do though if you already have a computer at home, which meets your school requirements (ie SSD already, and an i5/i7) and has Windows 7 Pro....you could always do most of the stuff on your laptop (the lighter side of programming) and then remote desktop to your home PC...this means having the power of your desktop on your laptop.  On another note this assumes your school has good enough internet.

 

One last important thing is battery life.  To be honest though, this is a bit difficult.  At my school there were plenty of plugs, so battery life was unimportant, but if your school doesn't have enough then you should get a laptop with enough juice to last you through the day.

[kingdorian]

I could get a killer deal on a zbook15 through my university it was about 40-50% the normal price from hp's website in the configuration I have. Doesn't your uni or instance have some kind of project?

[MrSpeed]

http://www.egprices.com/en/product/lenovo-ideapad-z510-i5-4-1tb-notebook-pc--egypt-laptop

http://www.egprices.com/en/product/lenovo-ideapad-z510-i5-6-1tb-nvidia-notebook-pc-compu-data-center

no ssd though

[Chansey]

I'm third year CS and I have a Sandy Bridge i3 from high school and it runs like a champ. It was $500 three years ago. I'm not quite sure what you'd NEED an i5 for... Just get something well built that you can afford.

[WanderingFool]

I'm third year CS and I have a Sandy Bridge i3 from high school and it runs like a champ. It was $500 three years ago. I'm not quite sure what you'd NEED an i5 for... Just get something well built that you can afford.

While i3 can be used, the reason for i5 in my opinion is 4 "cores" (I know that some on many models it is 2 physical cores with hyperthreading).  The reason is if you get into parallel programming having only 2 cores which comes with the i3 can drastically slow down the operation of your program.

 

 

On an unrelated note.  I had forgotten to say, the reason for SSD.  With programming you will have lots *and I mean lots in some cases* of small files which need to be accessed.  A conventional harddrive can really slow down the loading speeds, and hang up your programming environment *just for a second or two*.  With that said, many people can live with the extra boot and waiting times (I did for many semesters).

[Chansey]

While i3 can be used, the reason for i5 in my opinion is 4 "cores" (I know that some on many models it is 2 physical cores with hyperthreading).  The reason is if you get into parallel programming having only 2 cores which comes with the i3 can drastically slow down the operation of your program.

 

 

On an unrelated note.  I had forgotten to say, the reason for SSD.  With programming you will have lots *and I mean lots in some cases* of small files which need to be accessed.  A conventional harddrive can really slow down the loading speeds, and hang up your programming environment *just for a second or two*.  With that said, many people can live with the extra boot and waiting times (I did for many semesters).

I agree; if you're going to do parallel programming, more cores would be fantastic. And I also use an SSD in my laptop and would highly recommend getting one. SSDs can help a LOT with loading certain large programming environments (I'm looking at you, Matlab and Eclipse).