Need some help to buying a laptop for College

[subha]

Hello all I'm looking for a laptop for programming, virtualization and some engineering graphics editing. Currently my system has i5 4210m, 8GB, 1TB hdd. I've gone through some systems from lenovo and dell. All of them are coming with i7 6500u or i7 7500u, 16GB, 1TB had. Now my question is how good is i7 6500u or 7500u for Virtualization and engineering graphics editing?Pre installed Windows is not mandatory for me as most of the time I use Linux. My budget is around $1000

[Shog]

I got my gf an i7 6500u. It's pretty good, but then again she does nothing engineering related. In my opinion they would be completely fine for that and the big thing is getting that 8-16gb ram (i think 8 is plenty, but again it depends on your virtualization). You can always leave your computer calculating over the weekend, just don't ditch your old laptop. 

 

(I've used a ton of programs, but not the most intense (flow simulations))

I got her her computer on sale from Dell for about $700 brand new... 4 months ago? I don't know of any sales coming up though and since she really wanted a 13" laptop that put a premium on it. 

edited to add: don't forget when you take off the premium you have to add in your graphics card, I ran everything with an intel 5000 and my computer kicked the shit out of everyone elses. A lot of the difference in college is kids wait until the last minute then bitch it takes all night to run one iteration. When you start two weeks early it sure as hell shows!

[Shog]

The first thing I would do is look up sample programs that you will be running and ifnd out if 8 vs 16 is a big deal, then I would probably try to buy an upgradable laptop and just put in 16 yourself. Aim for a kick ass cpu and a gpu if you need one. The gpu might be able to be replaced, but that's a lot of digging.

[Sauron]

what's wrong with your current system? an ssd in there could work wonders. I do everyhting you listed on a thinkpad x220 with an i5 2540m and 8gb of ram. If it's a brick, has a terrible screen or short battery life then it could make sense to change it, but in terms of performance it should be good enough.

 

The "u" skew i7s are not that much faster than what you already have anyway.

[subha]

25 minutes ago, Sauron said:

what's wrong with your current system? an ssd in there could work wonders. I do everyhting you listed on a thinkpad x220 with an i5 2540m and 8gb of ram. If it's a brick, has a terrible screen or short battery life then it could make sense to change it, but in terms of performance it should be good enough.

 

The "u" skew i7s are not that much faster than what you already have anyway.

My current laptop is a Thinkpad E440 . So you think that I don't need to change my current system? But I thought that some lagging on my laptop is due to its 3 years old genaration processor and lack of ram support (max 8GB). I mainly install 4/5 vms and when I try to start anyone of them it takes more time than previous. Even using the CAD tools it takes almost 10 sec to open and initialize the app to use. I know that 'u' cpus are not as much as 'm' or 'mq'/'hq' cpus. But I have no way to take a thinkpad with 'hq' cpu in India as they haven't launched yet. Every consumer grade laptops are launching in India from last year with U cpu. Only 'hq's are coming with the gaming lineups like Alienware, ROG or Lenovo Y700 or msi.

[Shog]

My main laptop for college was 2 to 5 years old and didn't have a graphics card. 

 

 

... You're in India!?!?! I don't even know what laptops you can get there, I'm glad my advice was generic  

[subha]

1 hour ago, Shog said:

... You're in India!?!?! I don't even know what laptops you can get there, I'm glad my advice was generic  

 We have almost every brand available here in India. But if you say about warranty and support then Dell, lenovo, hp, asus and apple are the best. The main problem with these brands is that they don't launch their US or Canadian models here( except Apple as they have only one model for the entire world market). And if they launch a international one they just overprice. Take a simple example a Lenovo Y700 gaming laptop is priced at newegg $999 but costs here $1294 again an Alienware 13 i7 7700hq priced at Dell US site is $999.99 but an i5 6200u costs here $1485 and an i7 6700hq one costs $2700!!!! http://www.compuindia.com/alienware-laptops.html

Yes , I know that I can get them at lower costs like $1000-1200 from online retailers like amazon India or the other stores but then I'll have to compromise with the warranty and support as these brands don't accept warranty for products bought from other retailers rather than their own ones/authorised one. Very annoying

[Sauron]

2 hours ago, subha said:

My current laptop is a Thinkpad E440 . So you think that I don't need to change my current system? But I thought that some lagging on my laptop is due to its 3 years old genaration processor and lack of ram support (max 8GB). I mainly install 4/5 vms and when I try to start anyone of them it takes more time than previous. Even using the CAD tools it takes almost 10 sec to open and initialize the app to use. I know that 'u' cpus are not as much as 'm' or 'mq'/'hq' cpus. But I have no way to take a thinkpad with 'hq' cpu in India as they haven't launched yet. Every consumer grade laptops are launching in India from last year with U cpu. Only 'hq's are coming with the gaming lineups like Alienware, ROG or Lenovo Y700 or msi.

That really sounds like the symptoms of a slow hard drive, I'm pretty sure an ssd would breathe some new life into your machine. Even if I'm wrong you can reuse that ssd on any other machine and maybe save something on purchase.

 

-edit-

 

One more thing, if you use multiple vms at the same time you may want to increase your ram too - it shouldn't be a problem to throw 16gb in your existing machine if necessary. Monitor your ram usage to see if you need more. Once again, I don't think your cpu is the issue and even if it were, a u class processor wouldn't solve it.

[subha]

21 minutes ago, Sauron said:

One more thing, if you use multiple vms at the same time you may want to increase your ram too - it shouldn't be a problem to throw 16gb in your existing machine if necessary. Monitor your ram usage to see if you need more. Once again, I don't think your cpu is the issue and even if it were, a u class processor wouldn't solve it.

It's quoted on the user manual that maximum ram supported by my system is 8gb. And I'm already using two 4GB on each slot. Can I extend it to more? I mean 16GB?? Will my laptop's motherboard support that ram?

[Shog]

I would look up your mobo specs online to match the rev you have and see if it'll support 8gb ram in the slots, otherwise an ssd would help with loading times, but not rendering times. 

(That being said which is contributing to your issue is entirely dependant on what you're doing. I don't do much vm, but if I open a 1xx million point cloud nvme ssd doesn't really matter ) 

[Shog]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834332305&cm_sp=Homepage_FDD-_-P1_34-332-305-_-01132017

 

Is this a us only model?

[aubryscully]

What about something like this?

http://store.asus.com/us/item/201510AM170008064/A17602-ASUS+ROG+GL552VW-DH71+Intel+i7+2.6GHz+16GB+DDR4+1TB+HDD+GTX960M+2GB+15.6-inch+Full+HD+Gaming+Laptop

 

You would need to add in an SSD though which would raise the cost a bit. Much more powerful laptop than others mentioned though.

[Sauron]

3 hours ago, subha said:

It's quoted on the user manual that maximum ram supported by my system is 8gb. And I'm already using two 4GB on each slot. Can I extend it to more? I mean 16GB?? Will my laptop's motherboard support that ram?

Well, this page claims it supports up to 16GB of ram. When you bought it it probably said "up to 8gb" because single 8GB dimms weren't available yet. Of course, you'd have to remove your current ram sticks to make room for the higher capacity ones.

[neolinux]

What do you mean by engineering graphics editing? Do you mean image processing or 3D Modeling like SolidWorks and AutoCad? For virtualization you need 16GB if you can and 3D Modeling any dedicated graphics card. Don't overspend since you are a student, your assignments won't be that difficult. I know that from experience. i5 or i7 are fine there isn't much difference unless you are gonna render in your laptop which i highly doubt.

[subha]

4 hours ago, neolinux said:

What do you mean by engineering graphics editing? Do you mean image processing or 3D Modeling like SolidWorks and AutoCad? For virtualization you need 16GB if you can and 3D Modeling any dedicated graphics card. Don't overspend since you are a student, your assignments won't be that difficult. I know that from experience. i5 or i7 are fine there isn't much difference unless you are gonna render in your laptop which i highly doubt.

I mainly use FreeCAD and Apache OpenOffice Draw for some of my college projects. FreeCAD runs fine but OpenOffice takes some time(almost 10sec) to start. Virtualbox or Qemu loads out of memory frequently. I've already 8gb of ram

[subha]

7 hours ago, Sauron said:

Well, this page claims it supports up to 16GB of ram. When you bought it it probably said "up to 8gb" because single 8GB dimms weren't available yet. Of course, you'd have to remove your current ram sticks to make room for the higher capacity ones.

Thank you for your guidance. I've decided to buy a new 8gb ddr3l and will borrow one 8gb from my friend to see if it can support. And if not then I'll install 8gb in one slot by removing one 4GB to make it a 12GB total. And I'll also choose a 256GB ssd and will use the current 1TB hdd as an external hard drive.

[subha]

10 hours ago, Shog said:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834332305&cm_sp=Homepage_FDD-_-P1_34-332-305-_-01132017

 

Is this a us only model?

Newegg will not ship this product in India. Amazon India/eBay is selling a model with almost same specs at $990

http://www.amazon.in/Lenovo-80SV00FFIH-Laptop-i7-7500U-Graphic/dp/B01M8QXKS1

[subha]

9 hours ago, aubryscully said:

What about something like this?

http://store.asus.com/us/item/201510AM170008064/A17602-ASUS+ROG+GL552VW-DH71+Intel+i7+2.6GHz+16GB+DDR4+1TB+HDD+GTX960M+2GB+15.6-inch+Full+HD+Gaming+Laptop

 

You would need to add in an SSD though which would raise the cost a bit. Much more powerful laptop than others mentioned though.

Yes only this asus one is available here at same price. Really surprised by this. But not sure about their support. One of my friend had to wait almost 4 months to get the motherboard repaired of an asus zenbook

[NA_NotAvailable]

This is a advice no one will give you but its a good advice.

 

Get a 2010 Macbook Pro.  Virtualization and engineering graphics editing  is pretty good on it.

 

its like $400 you save $600 and they are still very very good. Specs are a little outdated but for any laptop coming from 2010, it can still kick ass. it can kick ass in some current 2016 laptops. This is a advice.

 

Its not new, its not flashy like the NEW ford focus, but rather its like a toyota corolla. IT does the job it is suppose to do, Really nice machine. 

[aubryscully]

2 hours ago, subha said:

Yes only this asus one is available here at same price. Really surprised by this. But not sure about their support. One of my friend had to wait almost 4 months to get the motherboard repaired of an asus zenbook

Asus support isn't bad. I had to RMA an Asus laptop maybe a year ago and they were nice and we had a quick turn around.