New Surface Pro or another laptop for college?

[Hana]

Hi so I'm a console gamer (yeah yeah not the place guys) but I'm a college freshman and I need a laptop, I'm a Pre nursing student (planning on going all the way to my masters) so I need a laptop that's light and great for notetaking, all of which the Surface pros do. But after LTT's review of the New Surface Pro, I was left feeling confused. Should I spring for the New version or go with the original surface pro 4? (I'm not sure how to separate the two cause the basically have the same name)

I have enough in the budget for either one but I want something that, hopefully, will get me through all 7 years of schooling and won't become so obsolete when I go for an upgrade after I graduate.

 

Thanks!

[79wjd]

If you plan to HEAVILY use the pen, then the Surface is good, otherwise, as a laptop, it's awful. I have a SP3 and I would literally have thrown it out a window if I had to use it as a laptop. 

[Qwweb]

Just get what will work while spending as little as possible. Pretty much anything you buy now will likely be obsolete after 7 years anyways unless you take very good care of it (typing this on an obsolete laptop that is 8 years old). I would also suggest looking at laptops first, expandable memory will be much more relevant than you think as you write more and more reports and dissertations.

[Himommies]

If you don't care about the pen then get a Macbook

[Hana]

Oh I forgot to mention that I was also looking at the new version of the LG Gram, I know the speakers suck but I was planning on using headphones anyway

[Hana]

12 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

If you plan to HEAVILY use the pen, then the Surface is good, otherwise, as a laptop, it's awful. I have a SP3 and I would literally have thrown it out a window if I had to use it as a laptop. 

What about the LG gram? The new version, I was planning on using headphones so the speakers aren't gonna be a big deal 

[Hana]

10 minutes ago, Qwweb said:

Just get what will work while spending as little as possible. Pretty much anything you buy now will likely be obsolete after 7 years anyways unless you take very good care of it (typing this on an obsolete laptop that is 8 years old). I would also suggest looking at laptops first, expandable memory will be much more relevant than you think as you write more and more reports and dissertations.

Yes I was planning on picking up a few 1TB or even just one with more storage on it? Which one?

[79wjd]

12 minutes ago, Qwweb said:

I would also suggest looking at laptops first, expandable memory will be much more relevant than you think as you write more and more reports and dissertations.

I'm sorry, but in what world will documents ever be the thing that fills up a 128GB+ drive...

 

2 minutes ago, Hana said:

What about the LG gram? The new version, I was planning on using headphones so the speakers aren't gonna be a big deal 

It will probably be much better, but I can't say for certain. 

[Qwweb]

Just now, Hana said:

Yes I was planning on picking up a few 1TB or even just one with more storage on it? Which one?

I would suggest 1-3TB depending on if you mind storing stuff on multiple drives.

 

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

I'm sorry, but in what world will documents ever be the thing that fills up a 128GB+ drive...

I currently have 150GB of text files on my laptop with notes, reports, PDFs, etc. Most of my courses require 10-30 pages of reports per semester on top of an average of 2-5 pages of notes per day. It all adds up quick, I have less than 5GB left on my hard drive and am currently in sophomore year...

[Himommies]

11 minutes ago, Qwweb said:

I would suggest 1-3TB depending on if you mind storing stuff on multiple drives.

 

I currently have 150GB of text files on my laptop with notes, reports, PDFs, etc. Most of my courses require 10-30 pages of reports per semester on top of an average of 2-5 pages of notes per day. It all adds up quick, I have less than 5GB left on my hard drive and am currently in sophomore year...

Do you people not have wifi or google drive in your school.I bring a Macbook to school.Take all my notes and just back it up to google drive.Heck I haven't deleted anything yet.

Also a Gigabyte can hold 64000 pages of text so I have no idea what your doing 

https://www.lexisnexis.com/applieddiscovery/lawlibrary/whitePapers/ADI_FS_PagesInAGigabyte.pdf

[Qwweb]

Just now, Himommies said:

Do you people not have wifi or google drive in your school.I bring a Macbook to school.Take all my notes and just back it up to google drive.Heck I haven't deleted anything yet.

Also a Gigabyte can hold 64000 pages of text so I have no idea what your doing 

https://www.lexisnexis.com/applieddiscovery/lawlibrary/whitePapers/ADI_FS_PagesInAGigabyte.pdf

Yeah, but if internet goes down or I am doing field work I cannot access cloud storage so I never use it.

 

My use case includes massive scan files that are stored as text files, LIDAR data for large project sites for use in cartography and research projects as well as environmental assessments and cultural landscape reports (each one is around a 1000-5000 page PDF).

 

Trust me, the amount of text on this thing is absurd.

[Himommies]

Just now, Qwweb said:

Yeah, but if internet goes down or I am doing field work I cannot access cloud storage so I never use it.

 

My use case includes massive scan files that are stored as text files, LIDAR data for large project sites for use in cartography and research projects as well as environmental assessments and cultural landscape reports (each one is around a 1000-5000 page PDF).

 

Trust me, the amount of text on this thing is absurd.

He's a pre nursing student so I doubt he has your use case.If it's just for taking notes like the op said then I would highly reccommend a smaller SSD vs a larger HDD

[Qwweb]

Just now, Himommies said:

He's a pre nursing student so I doubt he has your use case.If it's just for taking notes like the op said then I would highly reccommend a smaller SSD vs a larger HDD

I added the comment due to one of the types of courses he will be taking that will likely have him working with MRI and CAT files which can range into the realm of >15GB for instructional files.

[Himommies]

1 minute ago, Qwweb said:

>15GB for instructional files.

it's a more 5gb size

www.telemedproviders.com/telemedicine-articles/91-magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri.html

[kirashi]

23 hours ago, Hana said:

What about the LG gram? The new version, I was planning on using headphones so the speakers aren't gonna be a big deal 

The LG Gram is certainly an option, along with Lenovo's IdeaPad 510s or 710s and Dell's XPS 13 or 15 series. All depends on what you need and what you can compromise on to keep witihin your budget. While I obviously can't speak for @LinusTech, I have noticed that for the longest time his personal work laptop was the LG Gram they did a durability test on quite a few months ago. No idea if this is by choice or deliberate ad placement over the course of the months since that review, but with the selection of laptops LMG has available there's got to be something said about his choice of using the Gram.

 

As for speakers, it's good you're OK using headphones, or even getting a small portable Bluetooth speaker, since no laptop actually has the physical room to house speaker drivers with proper placement for quality sound reproduction anyway.

[Hana]

Okay so first, thank you for all the reasponses! It's given me a lot of incite into nursing school and it's needed storage, that being said I've decided on getting a Dell XPS 15. Now I have two options, get the one with an i5, 8 GB Ram and 256 GB SSD ($1,562) or get the more expensive i7 16GB and 1 TB SSD ($2,139)? I'm also going to get a 3 TB external harddrive at some point too but that'll come later when I absolutely need it.

[Hana]

On 9/30/2017 at 3:07 PM, kirashi said:

The LG Gram is certainly an option, along with Lenovo's IdeaPad 510s or 710s and Dell's XPS 13 or 15 series. All depends on what you need and what you can compromise on to keep witihin your budget. While I obviously can't speak for @LinusTech, I have noticed that for the longest time his personal work laptop was the LG Gram they did a durability test on quite a few months ago. No idea if this is by choice or deliberate ad placement over the course of the months since that review, but with the selection of laptops LMG has available there's got to be something said about his choice of using the Gram.

 

As for speakers, it's good you're OK using headphones, or even getting a small portable Bluetooth speaker, since no laptop actually has the physical room to house speaker drivers with proper placement for quality sound reproduction anyway.

I've decided on getting a Dell XPS . Get the i5, 8 GB Ram and 256 GB SSD or the i7 16GB and 1 TB SSD. I was thinking about getting the i5 cause touch drains the battery but what do you think?

[kirashi]

2 hours ago, Hana said:

I've decided on getting a Dell XPS . Get the i5, 8 GB Ram and 256 GB SSD or the i7 16GB and 1 TB SSD. I was thinking about getting the i5 cause touch drains the battery but what do you think?

Touch would drain the battery less than having a 4K display would, so if you don't need the 4K UHD display, then for sure go for the 1080p FHD display instead. DPI scaling is still atrocious for most software anyway, so 4K computer screens really are a waste of money at this time, unless you need them for 4K video editing or photography purposes.

 

EDIT: What country are you located in? I'm not seeing laptops priced at either of what you have listed above.

EDIT2: I see that in the USA and CANADA they only sell 4 models online anyway, so I'd get either the 2nd or 3rd model depending on your needs.