What laptop to buy for college

[purplecinnamon]

So I will be going to college in the Fall, and I am trying to decide what laptop to buy. I can't decide between the Dell XPS 13 or the Asus UX303LN. I am looking for something thin and light but with some horsepower to do basic 3d stuff. I'll be studying engineering and using some harder to run programs occasionally. But nothing to serious. I am tempted to buy the Asus because it comes with a dedicated GPU, but the screen apparently not the best. The Dell is much better in that regard but only has integrated graphics. What should I do?

 

Thanks! 

[The Pizza Thief]

I would go for a really comfortable, "cheap" laptop just for note taking, and use my home PC to work on all the projects and stuff, If you feel like you are really going to work on a laptop then go for it. (I bought a Mac Pro retina that is why the "cheap")

Sidenote, I've heard magnificent things about the surface thingy idk if its a laptop or a tablet.

[,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,]

MSI GS70 2PE-010US Stealth Pro 

 

It's a real slim laptop, pretty expensive though.

[kayodoc]

You honestly can't go wrong with either. The screens shouldn't be an issue on either as they both support touch and have ridiculously high resolutions for a 13" laptop. I'd put it down to personal choice or whichever is cheaper for the config you want. You really don't need much for college and generally a laptop with specs of a macbook air would even suffice.

[Peter Vaughan Truslow]

So I will be going to college in the Fall, and I am trying to decide what laptop to buy. I can't decide between the Dell XPS 13 or the Asus UX303LN. I am looking for something thin and light but with some horsepower to do basic 3d stuff. I'll be studying engineering and using some harder to run programs occasionally. But nothing to serious. I am tempted to buy the Asus because it comes with a dedicated GPU, but the screen apparently not the best. The Dell is much better in that regard but only has integrated graphics. What should I do?

 

Thanks! 

go with the XPS. a laptop with good battery life is a must in college. I can't afford to have my laptop die on me when I'm working on a coding project.

[jscho]

I got myself an Asus G550JK for university this year, cost me $2000 AUD, plus I added another 8GB of RAM, it should be much cheaper if you're based in the US, or even maybe EU.

It could use an SSD, but it's a really well built and light notebook, it has a 1080p IPS display which is really nice as well as relatively nice battery life.

 

EDIT: Linus has a video of it if you're interested. Click here

[vembutech]

Hi,

 

Go for Dell XPS 13 or MSI GS70 2PE-010US Stealth Pro .. Which is very slim and less weight.. 

[Aniallation]

So I will be going to college in the Fall, and I am trying to decide what laptop to buy. I can't decide between the Dell XPS 13 or the Asus UX303LN. I am looking for something thin and light but with some horsepower to do basic 3d stuff. I'll be studying engineering and using some harder to run programs occasionally. But nothing to serious. I am tempted to buy the Asus because it comes with a dedicated GPU, but the screen apparently not the best. The Dell is much better in that regard but only has integrated graphics. What should I do?

Basic 3D stuff will rely much more on the CPU then the GPU. Integrated graphics will get you by perfectly fine, just get the i5 version of the new 2015 XPS 13. ULV chips actually perform very well as long as you're not doing too extreme 3D stuff, but at that point you'll want a desktop to be doing it on anyways. For college you'll benefit much more from the extra thinness, lightness and battery life of the XPS 13 over the dedicated GPU of the Asus.