School notebook for a friend

[MrMP]

Hi LTT-Community,

 

I am new to this forum but I am a fan of LTT so I decided to give it a try.

 

A friend of mine (sister of a good friend) is currently 15 years old and about to get in a notebook class at her school. Problem is she doesn't have a Windows notebook, only an old Macbook from her sister, but needs one for this class. Neither her or her family know alot about PCs so they've come to me for help.

 

They got a note from the school with specs the notebook should have (I've included it in this post along with a translation). Before someone asks, I am from Austria, so english isn't my native tongue. Please excuse any errors

 

Additionally she told me it should cost 800€ max (if someone has an idea for a suitable one for 900-1000€ please include it), if gaming on it is possible it would be a plus, battery life isn't that important to her as it's probably plugged in in school anyway and an external optical drive is an opton for her.

 

Personally I've put it down to the ASUS F555UB-DM154T (altough it seems to have bad viewing angles) or the Acer Aspire E5-574G-57Z1.

The reason I'm here is that I'm not really convinced that these are the right devices for her and I'd like to get a few 2nd opinions an the subject and possibly recommendations for suitable notebooks.

 

 

Thanks in advance

MrMP

[SydneySideSteveSomewheres]

A second-hand Chrome book but there is something coming in the line-up so do your research, whatever that "thing" is some of the older low-end spec ones will not be compatible with it.

 

That way you do not have to pay for an OS also using the money you have saved to buy a Play Station or Xbox as the gaming experience on the low end of town is just not there...

[adm0n]

10 minutes ago, SydneySideSteveSomewheres said:

A second-hand Chrome book but there is something coming in the line-up so do your research, whatever that "thing" is some of the older low-end spec ones will not be compatible with it.

 

That way you do not have to pay for an OS also using the money you have saved to buy a Play Station or Xbox as the gaming experience on the low end of town is just not there...

They need windows, so that won't work.
 

I'd say, that she should get something cheep without gaming in mind. All the recommendable gaming laptops sit on the 1000€ mark and they usually only sport a 960m, which is on the same level as a 750ti ... She could save up some money and build a decent desktop for gaming. But if that is not an option, the Dell inspiron 7000 series, Lenovo y700 and acer aspire V15 Nitro are going to be your best bet (Linus does have reviews of at lest the first two). Unless you get a really great deal, you have to spend a bit more than 800€. 

 

If you do think about getting something cheaper, go with a i5 6gen U processor or above, anything else will become slow as hell, if you only install a couple of programs on the laptop. 

If you found something, http://www.notebookcheck.net/ usually has very good reviews, so you can check if it is actually as good as advertised : D and if you need more help you can always ask (I speak German as well, so if you think it's tedious to write in English the whole time, you can also PM me) 

 

good luck finding something

[MrMP]

Thanks for these quick answers.

 

I've just talked on the phone to her sister and her boyfriend and they've decided to stock up the budget for her notebook. (her birthday is comming up) The new buget is 1.200€ to 1.300€.

 

As adm0n said, Windows is a requirement from the school so chromebooks etc. are out of the question.

 

As for the VGA interface (I have no idea why it is  a requirement since every half modern/decent projector should have an HDMI or DVI port) there are cheap USB to VGA konverters (Link) wich are an option too. Does someone have experiences with these? But since school starts tomorrow for her she will check if the VGA port is really that important.

2 hours ago, adm0n said:

I'd say, that she should get something cheep without gaming in mind. All the recommendable gaming laptops sit on the 1000€ mark and they usually only sport a 960m, which is on the same level as a 750ti ... She could save up some money and build a decent desktop for gaming. But if that is not an option, the Dell inspiron 7000 series, Lenovo y700 and acer aspire V15 Nitro are going to be your best bet (Linus does have reviews of at lest the first two). Unless you get a really great deal, you have to spend a bit more than 800€. 

I know mobile GPUs aren't great but she doesn't have interest in a standalone PC. She isn't heavily into gaming, the idea is just that the laptop shouldn't just break down and output 5 or 6 FPS just because she fired up a game. So a dedicated GPU would be good.

2 hours ago, adm0n said:

If you do think about getting something cheaper, go with a i5 6gen U processor or above, anything else will become slow as hell, if you only install a couple of programs on the laptop.

If you found something, http://www.notebookcheck.net/ usually has very good reviews, so you can check if it is actually as good as advertised : D and if you need more help you can always ask (I speak German as well, so if you think it's tedious to write in English the whole time, you can also PM me)

I was thinking about a i5 6gen U (or higher) CPU but I'm not sure about the virtualization support in notebooks. The processors do support it but do the motherboards in notebooks too? Or is that something I have to be worried about?

 

Thanks

[adm0n]

If you have that much money I'd highly recommend the Dell XPS 15 9550. (Linus has a review of that as well)
(here is a cheap one http://www.ebay.at/itm/Dell-XPS-15-9550-Core-i5-6300HQ-2-3-GHz-Win-10-Pro-64-Bit-8-GB-RAM-3-/232071387539?hash=item3608885993:g:FKcAAOSwMgdXzJ6X)

I have one myself and don't have anything negative to say about it (just make sure to update your bios)
The i5 6300HQ is going to last her through almost everything since it is the 4 core version and the 960m
is decent. You can also upgrade the Ram and if she ever wants more battery life, you should be able to
swap the HDD for a M.2 SSD, that way you are able to install a bigger 6 cell battery which gets you 7-9h
run time. If you don't like it, you have my other recommendations already.

Let us know what you've picked and if you have any more questions, feel free to ask (:

[HarmFull]

Hey Guys,

 

Congrats on getting 3 million! Anyone of the laptops would be an upgrade from my 4 year old laptop and it would Totally fit my Blackwidow and Deathadder!

 

Good luck with the final design Edzel, can't wait for it!

 

I wish you guys the best in the coming years and let's get 4 million soon!

 

edit: Sorry man, wrong thread, don't know how it happend but I'm probably an idiot 

Edited September 7, 2016 by HarmFull
wrong thread, something went wrong on mobile :(

[MrMP]

3 hours ago, HarmFull said:

Hey Guys,

 

Congrats on getting 3 million! Anyone of the laptops would be an upgrade from my 4 year old laptop and it would Totally fit my Blackwidow and Deathadder!

 

Good luck with the final design Edzel, can't wait for it!

 

I wish you guys the best in the coming years and let's get 4 million soon!

Thanks for your post but you're in the wrong thread -> Link

On 5.9.2016 at 10:26 PM, adm0n said:

If you have that much money I'd highly recommend the Dell XPS 15 9550. (Linus has a review of that as well)
(here is a cheap one http://www.ebay.at/itm/Dell-XPS-15-9550-Core-i5-6300HQ-2-3-GHz-Win-10-Pro-64-Bit-8-GB-RAM-3-/232071387539?hash=item3608885993:g:FKcAAOSwMgdXzJ6X)

I have one myself and don't have anything negative to say about it (just make sure to update your bios)
The i5 6300HQ is going to last her through almost everything since it is the 4 core version and the 960m
is decent. You can also upgrade the Ram and if she ever wants more battery life, you should be able to
swap the HDD for a M.2 SSD, that way you are able to install a bigger 6 cell battery which gets you 7-9h
run time. If you don't like it, you have my other recommendations already.

Let us know what you've picked and if you have any more questions, feel free to ask (:

The Dell does look stunning. When I saw first saw Linus review of it a couple months ago, I was blown away by the infinity edge display. But how do you swap the HDD for an m.2 SSD? Or do you mean swaping the small 32GB SSD and replacing the HDD with a battery upgrade?

 

I'll recommend the Dell to them but in the end its up to her. They're also going to take her to an elektronics store tomorow so she can get her hands on a couple demo PCs to test what type of PC she likes (a convertible might come in handy or maybe, if she decides to ditch the gaming capability, she'll even want a more tablet-like notebook like a microsoft surface pro or similar).

 

Thanks again & I'll keep you updated.

[adm0n]

6 minutes ago, MrMP said:

But how do you swap the HDD for an m.2 SSD? Or do you mean swaping the small 32GB SSD and replacing the HDD with a battery upgrade?

I didn't know how informed you were and didn't want to talk about replacing both of the drives. But that is basically what I meant.

You could also replace the HDD and put a SATA SSD in there (I don't understand why they still putt HDDs in a laptop ...)

 

Anyway it is a beautiful piece of technology and she will definitely love it. I kinda worry about giving 1000€+ notebook to a 15 year old though ... 

She really needs to take good care of it, because a lot of people might want to steal it. And the infinity edge display, as beautiful as it looks, might

be a bit more fragile as normal display solutions.  

 

A tiny thing to consider is that the new intel kaby lake processors are going to be released and more laptops with the new 1000series GPUs 

from Nvidia will become available. You might get additional performance if you wait a bit (but that is always true ...) and prices of older skylake notebooks

might drop : D