Laptop for college?

[Guest]

When the Surface Book was announced it felt like a miracle had come true, but after learning it has a dual core processor and a GPU that is probably worse than the Macbook Pro I'm not sure what to do. I need the laptop for coding, modeling, and occasional Unreal Engine 4 use. Is there a miracle Windows PC out there or should I just get a Macbook Pro? Price doesn't matter. Battery matters.

[Nonco]

When the Surface Book was announced it felt like a miracle had come true, but after learning it has a dual core processor and a GPU that is probably worse than the Macbook Pro I'm not sure what to do. I need the laptop for coding, modeling, and occasional Unreal Engine 4 use. Is there a miracle Windows PC out there or should I just get a Macbook Pro? Price doesn't matter. Battery matters.

 

Its hard to get something with amazing battery life which also has great amounts of grunt. The best solution may just be a macbook pro. There are laptops like Clevo, Metabox, Sager which offer great power but not too sure how they will go with battery life. The thing with those machines though is that theyre highly customizable for a great price. SO might wanna look into it, depending on your model will probs tell you the average battery life.

[Ao_]

Surface Pro 4. Cheap, and portable ya. Get the 3 if yo on a budget

[Guest]

Does dual core even matter?

[79wjd]

Surface Pro 4. Cheap, and portable ya. Get the 3 if yo on a budget

You want a good keyboard if you're coding. So, the SP4 is probably terrible (the SP3 certainly is due to having a god awful keyboard). 

 

My vote goes for a Mac, since battery life is very important to me. But you can also get the surface book, a dual core is fine. 

[asiancorruption]

There is the razer blade, but I think the battery is around 7 hours of use instead of the pro 15's 9 hours of use. Also, that 7 hours of use maybe optimistic. The razer blade does have the grunt you need tho. 970m, quad core i7, 16gb of ram etc, etc.

[Guest]

There is the razer blade, but I think the battery is around 7 hours of use instead of the pro 15's 9 hours of use. Also, that 7 hours of use maybe optimistic. The razer blade does have the grunt you need tho. 970m, quad core i7, 16gb of ram etc, etc.

I would love to have the razer blade, but the battery life kills me.

[asiancorruption]

I would love to have the razer blade, but the battery life kills me.

So it is bad huh?  I guess you should get the macbook and just run boot camp on it, like you said.

[Sauron]

Does dual core even matter?

 

Yeah, because they're snappy as hell, don't overheat and won't drink your entire battery in 1 hour. For light/medium loads they're plenty.

 

@xxMichael the razer blade would come with a powerful gpu and cpu and have acceptable battery life, however it's by no means acceptable. Unfortunately, quad cores and good dedicated gpus rarely (if ever) come with outstanding battery life. This includes the higher end macbook pros - don't expect them to last like the dual core igpu models, and they still come with pretty low end gpus.

 

Personally I would opt for a light dual core with a long battery life, like an entry level dell xps15. For college it's plenty, and if money isn't a problem you could build a powerful desktop for any heavier work you might need to do (remember you can always work on the laptop and have the desktop render everything once you're done).

[Guest]

Yeah, because they're snappy as hell, don't overheat and won't drink your entire battery in 1 hour. For light/medium loads they're plenty.

 

@xxMichael the razer blade would come with a powerful gpu and cpu and have acceptable battery life, however it's by no means acceptable. Unfortunately, quad cores and good dedicated gpus rarely (if ever) come with outstanding battery life. This includes the higher end macbook pros - don't expect them to last like the dual core igpu models, and they still come with pretty low end gpus.

 

Personally I would opt for a light dual core with a long battery life, like an entry level dell xps15. For college it's plenty, and if money isn't a problem you could build a powerful desktop for any heavier work you might need to do (remember you can always work on the laptop and have the desktop render everything once you're done).

It's said that the high end Macbook Pros have 9 hours battery though. I don't understand.

[79wjd]

It's said that the high end Macbook Pros have 9 hours battery though. I don't understand.

I'd say I get about 4-5 hours of heavy use out of my 2013 15" rMBP. So 9 hours is more if you're not running chrome (chrome is a bitch compared to safari in terms of power) and not watching videos is probably reasonable. With that said, the 15" Pros are still on Haswell (and will probably be upgraded to Skylake at some point soon...) so it's probably worthwhile holding off if you can (and if you're seriously considering the 15" pro).

[Sauron]

It's said that the high end Macbook Pros have 9 hours battery though. I don't understand.

 

that's the advertised spec, it rarely actually happens.

[Dackzy]

Look at the yoga 900, and the surface book can run Auto Cad (a 3D modeling program), so i would not say that it is a weak cpu that's in it.

[79wjd]

that's the advertised spec, it rarely actually happens.

Well, with chrome (22 tabs), steam, messages, and pages running at 40% brightness, I've burned through 25% of my 15" rMBP's battery in about an hour and a half. So 6~ hours of total battery life (compared to the 4-5~ when playing video). So, if I would switch to safari and/or use less tabs then I'd probably expect 7-8 hours. 

[NeoZeon]

So I just bought the mid 2015 rMBP, after having a 15 inch mbp (early 2011) die on me 2 nights ago. The graphics card overheated and was damaged irreparably. I'll say that the keyboard keys aren't as nice as the old ones and the new trackpad feels just as good but its not as comfortable to press down on even with the haptic engine. I will get used to it.

 

The screen is brilliant, photoshop and illustrator open up instantly, ect. fwiw, I bought the highest end processor and 1tb of ssd storage, so I ended up spending a ton of money. 

 

The battery life is only OK. If you use safari its much better than chrome.... I can get ~8 hours of working in matlab/safari/illustrator. Anytime you start using java/flash the battery takes a big hit. 

[79wjd]

So I just bought the mid 2015 rMBP, after having a 15 inch mbp (early 2011) die on me 2 nights ago. The graphics card overheated and was damaged irreparably.

 

I'll say that the keyboard keys aren't as nice as the old ones....

Well that's...interesting.

 

The keyboard hasn't changed since 2009? (and you get used to and eventually prefer the unibody style keyboard to the pre-2009 keyboard). 

[Sauron]

Well, with chrome (22 tabs), steam, messages, and pages running at 40% brightness, I've burned through 25% of my 15" rMBP's battery in about an hour and a half. So 6~ hours of total battery life (compared to the 4-5~ when playing video). So, if I would switch to safari and/or use less tabs then I'd probably expect 7-8 hours. 

 

It doesn't really scale that way, what really drains the battery is the screen. Besides, that's still pretty light use, under heavier loads the battery life would shorten significantly. So sure, in THEORY it can last 8-9 hours, but I wouldn't expect it to in normal usage. Doesn't mean the battery is bad for what it is, but in general if battery is #1 priority I'd go for something else.

[NeoZeon]

Well that's...interesting.

 

The keyboard hasn't changed since 2009? (and you get used to and eventually prefer the unibody style keyboard to the pre-2009 keyboard). 

 

It feels much stiffer and seems like it has a bit less travel than my 2011 MPB. I also have the old apple wireless keyboard, which feels exactly the same as my 2011 macbook pro, but this again feels like there is less key travel and its firm when I press down. I normally use either a cherry mx blue keyboard or an HHKB ( topre) so i'm very sensative to how keys feel. It might just be me (or my particular macbook), but the ones on the floor felt the same. In general everything is stiffer on the rMPB

[NeoZeon]

It doesn't really scale that way, what really drains the battery is the screen. Besides, that's still pretty light use, under heavier loads the battery life would shorten significantly. So sure, in THEORY it can last 8-9 hours, but I wouldn't expect it to in normal usage. Doesn't mean the battery is bad for what it is, but in general if battery is #1 priority I'd go for something else.

 

 

I get better batterylife than what he suggests in my first few days of usage doing heavier loads.

[79wjd]

It doesn't really scale that way, what really drains the battery is the screen. Besides, that's still pretty light use, under heavier loads the battery life would shorten significantly. So sure, in THEORY it can last 8-9 hours, but I wouldn't expect it to in normal usage. Doesn't mean the battery is bad for what it is, but in general if battery is #1 priority I'd go for something else.

Under normal to 'heavy' usage (I don't think most people are sitting with 20+ tabs in chrome open all chugging power) you're looking at a pretty easy 6 hours. So if I were to use Safari and have a more reasonable number of tabs open I'd easily expect 7-8 hours. 

 

It feels much stiffer and seems like it has a bit less travel than my 2011 MPB. I also have the old apple wireless keyboard, which feels exactly the same as my 2011 macbook pro, but this again feels like there is less key travel and its firm when I press down. I normally use either a cherry mx blue keyboard or an HHKB ( topre) so i'm very sensative to how keys feel. It might just be me (or my particular macbook), but the ones on the floor felt the same. In general everything is stiffer on the rMPB

hmmm, could be. I didn't use the non retina unibodies very much. I went from my 2007 MBP to a rMBP. 

[exercutor5]

snip

 

Wait, what's your budget even? We also need to know where you live.