When to buy a laptop for school?

[h7779]

I've asked on here what cpu is best suited for me, but when should I buy one? Should I wait for the "back to school" sale? Where is the best place to get a laptop (Costco, Amazon, Newegg, Frys's etc.)? 

 

Sorry for these noobie questions, never really needed a laptop till now.

[Speaker1264]

Seems like a waste of money.  When I was in school I just used the computers that they had in the library, or the ones that were available in pretty much every building until I got home and would work on my desktop.  What makes it so that you "need" a laptop?  Just for convenience?

[linuxfan66]

It helped me a lot in my studies so its not a bad idea. if you want to check look at the prices they offer in catalogues and compare with online and other shops to find the best offer and for a laptop where battery life is not king and all you want is basic apps the amd a? cpus are just fine in my testing while being cheap.

[h7779]

Seems like a waste of money.  When I was in school I just used the computers that they had in the library, or the ones that were available in pretty much every building until I got home and would work on my desktop.  What makes it so that you "need" a laptop?  Just for convenience?

Using it for programming class, my major is computer system engineering. Wasn't planning on getting one till one of my friends told me that it would save me a lot of time to just have my own comp instead of having to use the school comp. He also said the school comp. are extremely slow.  

[Speaker1264]

Using it for programming class, my major is computer system engineering. Wasn't planning on getting one till one of my friends told me that it would save me a lot of time to just have my own comp instead of having to use the school comp. He also said the school comp. are extremely slow.  

 

The programming class will either have its own computer room, or will simply be an instructional class, with all your programming be done as homework after class.  You shouldn't be required to own a laptop to take a class.  Also, if you expected the school to be using top of the line computers well of course not, but most universities update their PC's every other year or so, so if you think your budget laptop is going to be any faster, well I doubt it.  But most people measure the speed of a computer by how fast it loads their facebook page or whatever, which of course, has nothing to do with the computer.

 

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to pick on you, but it's just a pet peeve of mine when people say they need a laptop for college or whatever, when usually that is not the case, people just tend to use it as an excuse to buy one. Will it save you time? Probably, but how much time is it actually going to save though, and is that time savings worth the price? Only you can decide, so I'll end my rant there.  lol.

[h7779]

The programming class will either have its own computer room, or will simply be an instructional class, with all your programming be done as homework after class.  You shouldn't be required to own a laptop to take a class.  Also, if you expected the school to be using top of the line computers well of course not, but most universities update their PC's every other year or so, so if you think your budget laptop is going to be any faster, well I doubt it.  But most people measure the speed of a computer by how fast it loads their facebook page or whatever, which of course, has nothing to do with the computer.

 

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to pick on you, but it's just a pet peeve of mine when people say they need a laptop for college or whatever, when usually that is not the case, people just tend to use it as an excuse to buy one. Will it save you time? Probably, but how much time is it actually going to save though, and is that time savings worth the price? Only you can decide, so I'll end my rant there.  lol.

I see, I'll just wait till class starts then, and see how it goes and decide from there.

[XDroidie626]

Look at it from a usage standpoint, do you REALLY need the laptop? and if so how much performance do you need? if your just writing in python with "Hello world" then you don't need a i7, a Atom/Pentium N series would do.

If you do need a laptop look at price/battery/performance in that order, so set a budget say £400, then look for the longest life laptops in that range then look at the chip, While I have not used a Atom or Pentium I expect with the quad cores they should perform well for basic tasks and even basic programming.

http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-15-3551-laptop/pd?ref=PD_Family<- I would say the second one for a cheap laptop, then maybe swap the HDD for a 256GB SSD and push the RAM if you can, if you cant 4GB should be just fine for you.

I see you have a fairly powerful build in your description, if you ever come to need more power use that, any big tasks I use like VMs I will prep on my laptop and then shift to the desktop over the network and let that run them, and I can still control the PC via VNC if I want, although I don't because I prefer my KnM over the laptop KnM.

TL:DR version cheap cheerful battery life laptop for class if you need it, and raw performance from your desktop when you need that, best of both worlds.

[h7779]

Look at it from a usage standpoint, do you REALLY need the laptop? and if so how much performance do you need? if your just writing in python with "Hello world" then you don't need a i7, a Atom/Pentium N series would do.

If you do need a laptop look at price/battery/performance in that order, so set a budget say £400, then look for the longest life laptops in that range then look at the chip, While I have not used a Atom or Pentium I expect with the quad cores they should perform well for basic tasks and even basic programming.

http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-15-3551-laptop/pd?ref=PD_Family<- I would say the second one for a cheap laptop, then maybe swap the HDD for a 256GB SSD and push the RAM if you can, if you cant 4GB should be just fine for you.

I see you have a fairly powerful build in your description, if you ever come to need more power use that, any big tasks I use like VMs I will prep on my laptop and then shift to the desktop over the network and let that run them, and I can still control the PC via VNC if I want, although I don't because I prefer my KnM over the laptop KnM.

TL:DR version cheap cheerful battery life laptop for class if you need it, and raw performance from your desktop when you need that, best of both worlds.

Thank you for your input, I'll will take that into concentration.