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Laptop for high school

BiG T5
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I was looking at buying a laptop for high school, but the only problem is I don’t know what to get. I was thinking either the dell XPS 15 with the intel i7 and fully specked out. Or the 2018 MacBook Pro 13 with the i5 and 512gb of ssd storage. Please share your expertise with me :) 

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Whats the system for?

 

Those are pretty high end, the macbook especially 

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3 minutes ago, BiG T5 said:

I was looking at buying a laptop for high school, but the only problem is I don’t know what to get. I was thinking either the dell XPS 15 with the intel i7 and fully specked out. Or the 2018 MacBook Pro 13 with the i5 and 512gb of ssd storage. Please share your expertise with me :) 

I doubt you'll need spec'ed out for highschool. Macbook OS might hold you back by limiting software compatibility, but most things are done on Google I would assume. In that case, you'd barely need more than a chromebook.

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10 minutes ago, food158 said:

I doubt you'll need spec'ed out for highschool. Macbook OS might hold you back by limiting software compatibility, but most things are done on Google I would assume. In that case, you'd barely need more than a chromebook.

you cant get a lot of sotfware suites in macOS. get windows. so get the xps. 

 

honestly though, the xps maxxed out is wayyyyyy overkill for HS. 

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Just now, Saksham said:

you cant get a lot of sotfware suites in macOS. get windows. so get the xps. 

 

honestly though, the xps maxxed out is wayyyyyy overkill for HS. 

Right, Windows for compatibility, but I don't think he needs much more than a $500 laptop since work is done on Google Docs etc.

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1 minute ago, food158 said:

Right, Windows for compatibility, but I don't think he needs much more than a $500 laptop since work is done on Google Docs etc.

even better idea. if you already have a computer at home that you dont plan on taking to school (another laptop or a desktop), get a chromebook and remote desktop into it. chromebooks will be MUCH cheaper and remote accessing your powerfull pc at home (assuming you have one) would be great. (then all your work is on one machine and therefore you only need to back up one pc. 

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Welcome to the forum!

 

As other's have said a Dell XPS is severely overkill for High School, I never even opened a single Excel spreadsheet during my entire high school experience which wasn't overly long ago. All you need is text documents and the internet. In University, yeah but something like a Chromebook or a tablet would suffice for your current needs. However, if you are really sold on the XPS don't get the 15, get the 13, as you won't need dedicated graphics and your battery life will be significantly better. I have an XPS 13 that I use heavily with software and web development, plus massive Excel spreadsheets and it has been great. Highly doubt you will encounter workloads like that. 

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Like everyone has said, both are overkill, but my recommendations to get neither. Find a dell latitude or a lenovo or an LG gram which has upgradeable ram. I remember a couple of days ago seeing some 8th gen i5 with an mx150 for like $850 or $750. Not amazing performance but it is plenty for high school and honestly college. Remember that mobile i5s have the same core count as mobile i7s (U-series of course - unless its from Apple) and they'll run cooler since the laptop chassis is designed to handle the highest spec they offer. I have an HP Spectre X360 with an i7-8550U (or something like that) and I wish I either got an i5 with an MX150/1050 or an R5 or R7 laptop. Having a GPU will probably benefit you more than the difference between a mobile i5 and i7. For school though, battery life is incredibly important, so don't go for anything that claims less than 9 hours.

 

The beauty of buying a laptop now versus a few years ago (especially one with upgradeable RAM) is that 8th gen intel finally brought 4 cores 8 threads which means you can probably get a lot of use out of them before they become too slow to bother with. If you're willing to spend ~$750+ and you aren't a freshman in high school, there's no reason the laptop you get now won't last you through college.

 

Good luck with your laptop searches!

 

P.S - I'd advise against a MacBook because if you're planning on going into a STEM major you'll need to put windows on it anyways.

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On 3/7/2019 at 9:00 AM, BiG T5 said:

snip

Location? Budget? Usage? Any preference on weight and battery life? Mind low sRGB display and non-upgradable RAM?

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