Laptops for Computer Science Student

[Tom Haywood]

Hi looking for a good gaming computer that will be best to use at Uni. I am doing Computer Science so will need to normal stuff on it and enough battery life. Would like something with the price around £1000 but willing to go higher. Any questions just ask. Links would be great also.

[The Sloth]

focus on your school first, dell Inspiron with 7700hq and a 1050ti. 

[The Sloth]

Just now, wrathoftheturkey said:

Why? If not gaming, an XPS is the better choice.

i am assuming he doesn't have buckets of money to throw at a xps, also it won't give him much benefit over the Inspiron for his need. 

[The Sloth]

Just now, wrathoftheturkey said:

1. The XPS 15 starts at under 1000

2) Actually, it's the other way around. He doesn't need the Inspiron's beefy CPU or GPU if he's not gaming, while the more premium XPS is going to be lighter and have a better screen and battery life.

 

1- xps 15 is a better option for him and that doesn't start at 1000.  

2- yes a beefy cpu is good to have especially for games, battery life is not bad with a 1080p screen. i want to see overwatch going at 60 fps in decen't setting in xps 13. 

[The Sloth]

12 minutes ago, Tom Haywood said:

Hi looking for a good gaming computer that will be best

 

Just now, wrathoftheturkey said:

Did you read what I said? The post doesn't mention gaming, just "normal stuff," and I said XPS 15. 

reading is not your strong suit. 

[EslyteMedia]

13 minutes ago, nerdslayer1 said:

focus on your school first, dell Inspiron with 7700hq and a 1050ti. 

I agree.

[Tom Haywood]

Thanks Guys, great help

[Guest lilbman]

Razer Blade

[GoodBytes]

38 minutes ago, Tom Haywood said:

Hi looking for a good gaming computer that will be best to use at Uni. I am doing Computer Science so will need to normal stuff on it and enough battery life. Would like something with the price around £1000 but willing to go higher. Any questions just ask. Links would be great also.

They are many fine laptops. Computer Science or any engineering related fields don't need anything powerful. All projects are fairly simple, even "big projects" are simple enougth for today's computers.

 

Here are questions you should as yourself:

 - How much battery life you want?

 - What size of a system do you want? (smallest, small, medium, large, extra large, 32inch screen with a full ATX tower on the back... you get the idea)?

 - Do you want a digitizer pen? When I did my Computer Science degree, having a pen to write those equations with special symbols, diagrams, and such was impossible to do with a laptop... well you COULD do it, but by the time you finish doing it, you'll raise your head and see another professor in class, and different students around it.

 

I think this will help you better in making a choice.

 

Personally, if you want to know what I used.. remember this was a whiles ago:

 

 - Dell Latitude E6400. A powerful, 14inch "thin" (at the time (2008), now it is normal size) laptop with early LED back light LCD monitors, Quadro NVS 160M (GeForce 9300M  but with 256MB of dedicated memory instead of using system RAM), 4GB of RAM, Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz, back light keyboard (one of the first PC backlight keyboard) and using the latest and greatest internal technologies all to give you the system you need to actually run Windows Vista smoothly and be responsive, all while giving you a nice 9h (max) of battery life. A nice system that cost me $1800 Canadian (with 3 year next buisness day on site service and warranty from Dell).

 

- Then I switch what I really wanted since day, but cost $3000 at the time, and could not even run Windows XP smoothly to start with (forget Vista), the Surface Pro 2. That costs me ~$1300 Canadian with the keyboard cover, with Microsoft Complete (2 year warranty with accidental damage protection), and student discount.

 

Now if you wonder why I get these extended warranties... well normally I don't. But because the system is being carried every day to university, and that includes many week-ends, and I used public transport, you are bound to have problems. I mean, you get bumped everywhere, someone can trip on your power cord, you drop your bag on the floor by mistake, fast temperature difference between hot and very cold, and high humidity (I am in Canada), from going in and out in winter, all plays in a role in getting problems. And yes, I have used the warranty service.

 

 - My Dell laptop needed fixing once, but I forgot what it was at the moment, oh and, a second time, when my university switch to Wireless N, from G, despite having a wireless N card in my laptop and a wireless N router at home, all working, it didn't work at school. It ended up being that the specific revision of my laptop wireless card (Intel wireless card), didn't work with the Cisco router that the school was using. Dell sent a tech, the next business day, at my place, in the morning at the time I wanted, for him to come and replace the wireless card with a newer revision card. And then I was on my way to university and now enjoying wireless.

 

 - My Surface Pro headphone plug broke as it got bump while having headphones plugged in. Microsoft shipped me a Surface Pro 3 (with a new pen and keyboard). So this is what I use now. I use it for work daily.

[edit1754]

Not sure if the laptop in question above is the 7559 or 7567.

• The 7559 has a GTX 960M and a good quality display.
• The 7567 has a GTX 1050/Ti and a very low quality display.

 

I can recommend the 7559 if you don't want the faster GPU, however I generally don't recommend the 7567 due to its display. I think you'll find the difference between a good quality display and a not-so-good one to be noticeable. If you wanted the faster GPU, I would get something like the PCSpecialist Optimus  VIII (Clevo N850HK1) which uses a good display: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/optimusVIII-15/

 

I also question the need for an i7-7700HQ over a i5-7300HQ. The i5-quad should be plenty fast for almost anything you'll need to do for comp-sci, and for gaming when paired with a GTX 1050 / Ti. For the Optimus VIII I would pick i5+1050Ti over i7+1050 if it came down to that.

 

Inspiron 7567 on right. HP Omen 15 (similar display to Inspiron 7559) on left. And the Optimus VIII uses an even better display than the Omen/i7559 when it comes to color saturation, if I'm not mistaken.

 

 

[ramo55]

12 hours ago, edit1754 said:

Not sure if the laptop in question above is the 7559 or 7567.

• The 7559 has a GTX 960M and a good quality display.
• The 7567 has a GTX 1050/Ti and a very low quality display.

 

I can recommend the 7559 if you don't want the faster GPU, however I generally don't recommend the 7567 due to its display. I think you'll find the difference between a good quality display and a not-so-good one to be noticeable. If you wanted the faster GPU, I would get something like the PCSpecialist Optimus  VIII (Clevo N850HK1) which uses a good display: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/optimusVIII-15/

 

I also question the need for an i7-7700HQ over a i5-7300HQ. The i5-quad should be plenty fast for almost anything you'll need to do for comp-sci, and for gaming when paired with a GTX 1050 / Ti. For the Optimus VIII I would pick i5+1050Ti over i7+1050 if it came down to that.

 

Inspiron 7567 on right. HP Omen 15 (similar display to Inspiron 7559) on left. And the Optimus VIII uses an even better display than the Omen/i7559 when it comes to color saturation, if I'm not mistaken.

 

 

 

Wait a minute. Is there no way to get the dell inspiron with the new 1050/ti without having the bad screen? Is the only good screen one the 7559?

[Pendragon]

5 hours ago, ramo55 said:

Wait a minute. Is there no way to get the dell inspiron with the new 1050/ti without having the bad screen? Is the only good screen one the 7559?

 

U can get the 4k one or DIY void your warranty swap out the screen. 

[ramo55]

Just now, Pendragon said:

U can get the 4k one or DIY void your warranty swap out the screen. 

4k screen is kinda overkill on a screen of that size, so I guess I'm sticking to the 7559 model, thanks.

[HOW TO XD]

you should get hp pavillion its a quad core icore7 with 2.56 ghz 8 gb of rams for only $500 i think 

[HOW TO XD]

my question is that like i got a hp notebook laptop i just got i mean i upgrade it to 8 gb and its amd quad core processor with hd radeon graphics i think its an r3 but only 2 ghz of rams i mean its still got 512 mb dedicated to video memory i was wondering like if i change the cpu i would lose those video memory ?