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Laptop For College

Team_Dango
By Team_Dango
in Phones and Tablets
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So I'm am looking to buy a new laptop. For the past few years my daily/gaming machine has been a decently powerful desktop PC that I built myself. My laptop, on the other hand, has been it an ancient and unbearably slow Lenovo that I only rarely use at school. Now I have graduated high school, and before I head off for college I want to get a more usable everyday laptop. I am fairly new to the market, so I really need suggestions to get started. My budget is pretty open, maybe $1200 $1700, but I could go higher if it was worth it.

 

First off, I will be bringing my desktop with me for gaming and heavy duty working, so I am not looking for a gaming laptop. Instead I am looking for something that is portable, convenient, with good battery life, that doesn't sacrifice all it's power. I do a lot of photo and video editing, so the laptop needs to have a good display, preferably IPS. High resolutions are cool but not mandatory. 

 

My first thought was a macbook since they are just so ubiquitous. The $1500 13" macbook pro with retina seems to be about what I am looking for. I'm not anti-mac, but I do hate OSX, so if I got a macbook I would certainly install Windows, and if all things were equal, I would rather get a PC.

 

What do you guys think is the best option?

 

 

PS this is my first post on this forum so I apologize if I made any fatal errors. :)

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Go for a Macbook. It's your best bet.

And why would you ditch OSX for such a shitty OS like windows? You'd be wasting precious battery life.

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So I'm am looking to buy a new laptop. For the past few years my daily/gaming machine has been a decently powerful desktop PC that I built myself. My laptop, on the other hand, has been it an ancient and unbearably slow Lenovo that I only rarely use at school. Now I have graduated high school, and before I head off for college I want to get a more usable everyday laptop. I am fairly new to the market, so I really need suggestions to get started. My budget is pretty open, maybe $1200 $1700, but I could go higher if it was worth it.

 

First off, I will be bringing my desktop with me for gaming and heavy duty working, so I am not looking for a gaming laptop. Instead I am looking for something that is portable, convenient, with good battery life, that doesn't sacrifice all it's power. I do a lot of photo and video editing, so the laptop needs to have a good display, preferably IPS. High resolutions are cool but not mandatory. 

 

My first thought was a macbook since they are just so ubiquitous. The $1500 13" macbook pro with retina seems to be about what I am looking for. I'm not anti-mac, but I do hate OSX, so if I got a macbook I would certainly install Windows, and if all things were equal, I would rather get a PC.

 

What do you guys think is the best option?

 

 

PS this is my first post on this forum so I apologize if I made any fatal errors. :)

Follow your topic so you don't miss the answers!

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Go for a Macbook. It's your best bet.

And why would you ditch OSX for such a shitty OS like windows? You'd be wasting precious battery life.

Oi stop talking shit. Im running bootcamp on my mac and get so much more battery life out of it than running stupid osx.

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Oi stop talking shit. Im running bootcamp on my mac and get so much more battery life out of it than running stupid osx.

That's impossible matey.

Intel i7 7700K | MSI Z270 Gaming M3 | MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X| Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8GB DDR4 3000Mhz | Samsung EVO 850 250GB | WD Blue 1TB | Corsair CS650M | Thermalright Macho Rev. A | NZXT S340

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That's impossible matey.

Not its not. Run windows on powersave and it runs longer than osx... But its still shit cause i have 20+ chrome tabs running.

[Case Mod] Operation: The Division --- > Here

[CUSTOM WATER COOLED TABLE] Project: Ravage ---> Here

-== QUOTE ME IN YOUR REPLY IF YOU WANT ME TO RESPOND ==-

 

 

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So I'm am looking to buy a new laptop. For the past few years my daily/gaming machine has been a decently powerful desktop PC that I built myself. My laptop, on the other hand, has been it an ancient and unbearably slow Lenovo that I only rarely use at school. Now I have graduated high school, and before I head off for college I want to get a more usable everyday laptop. I am fairly new to the market, so I really need suggestions to get started. My budget is pretty open, maybe $1200 $1700, but I could go higher if it was worth it.

 

First off, I will be bringing my desktop with me for gaming and heavy duty working, so I am not looking for a gaming laptop. Instead I am looking for something that is portable, convenient, with good battery life, that doesn't sacrifice all it's power. I do a lot of photo and video editing, so the laptop needs to have a good display, preferably IPS. High resolutions are cool but not mandatory. 

 

My first thought was a macbook since they are just so ubiquitous. The $1500 13" macbook pro with retina seems to be about what I am looking for. I'm not anti-mac, but I do hate OSX, so if I got a macbook I would certainly install Windows, and if all things were equal, I would rather get a PC.

 

What do you guys think is the best option?

 

 

PS this is my first post on this forum so I apologize if I made any fatal errors. :)

 

 

There's someone asking for something similar in this thread too (if I'm reading both correctly).

So I'll just sorta copy what I told them, but check out that thread too for suggestions: 

It depends still a little more on what you wanna do with it.

I know a lot of people are suggesting the MBP or the XPS 13, which are good choices.

But if you need a quad-core processor, or a numpad, or the ability to choose/upgrade your storage or RAM, I can suggest the Shark 4 from Eurocom.

 

And there are still some more laptops based on Clevo chassis. For example these from XoticPC with integrated graphics, for less than or around $1000:

Sager NP2650 (Clevo W650SZ),

Sager NP2740 (Clevo W740SU).

 

 

FYI, if you do decide to buy one of these, it's usually best to buy the storage drive separately. Just saves you a bit of money usually.

 

The Clevo-based machines are very configurable, but they don't have the battery power that you might be looking for.

 

 

The Dell XPS 13 is a good candidate too. Great battery, and pretty stylish (looks pretty much like a MBP), but it has a touchscreen option too if you're into that.

The downside is that it restricts you to the same dual-core "U"-type (low power) processors that you'll find.

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I think the new Dell XPS 13 with the QHD display would meet all your requirements.

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Thanks so much for the suggestions guys! So far it looks like I have 1 vote for the macbook and 2 votes for an XPS 13. I was actually considering the XPS 13 before I posted here, after watching Linus's review on it. His he had pros and cons but overall his thoughts seemed positive and the laptop looked pretty good. Plus its a lot cheaper than the mac (in the config I'd want it would be $1100).

 

Any other thoughts?

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For what it's worth when you forget your charger at home it's a lot easier to find someone who has a MagSafe connector than some other brand's connector. 

 

+ My buddy usually uses this to strike up conversation to get a girls number, "Oh I forgot my charger at home, any chance I can barrow your's?"..."BTW I'm Sam"  (Sam is not his real name)

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For what it's worth when you forget your charger at home it's a lot easier to find someone who has a MagSafe connector than some other brand's connector. 

 

+ My buddy usually uses this to strike up conversation to get a girls number, "Oh I forgot my charger at home, any chance I can barrow your's?"..."BTW I'm Sam"  (Sam is not his real name)

That's a nice convenience to have actually.

With a lot of new machines supporting USB type C though, it might be easy to find a connector regardless of the brand.

(Although we should all be careful to recognize the difference between a standard and a monopoly.)

And uh yeah, I have no comment about that other thing.

My (first) build: i7 4790k | Noctua NH-U14S + NF-A15 | Gigabyte Z97X-SLI | G.Skill Ripjaws X 2x4GB 2133MHz CL9 | Samsung 840 EVO 120GB | Seagate 2TB SSHD | 2x MSI R9 270X TwinFrozr crossfire | Seasonic G Series 750W 80+ Gold | Asus VX238H 23" | GAMDIAS HERMES | Logitech G602 | Steelseries QcK | Windows 8.1

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I have had many experiences with Dell products and I would say their products are solid and none of them have ever broke on me, but the MacBook is more of the productivity type which suits the college need.

My vote goes to XPS though because of simply how many features it has like the display.

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