13" Student Laptop

Minimaxx · February 18, 2018

Good Evening everyone,

I am a student in computer science and I am using more and more Linux in my different courses. The problem is that I have a desktop computer at home, on which I can run my favorite distro, but when on the go (and I'm very often on the go, I'm travelling by train two times a week to go to my parent's on week-ends) I don't have any portable system which allows me to work with a Linux environment.

This is why I am looking at acquiring a Laptop to run Linux on it. I have been looking at all the options proposed by the big companies out there (Dell, Lenovo, HP, Asus, Acer, ...) but I didn't found anything interesting for me. As you might expect, I don't have an unlimited budget (around 500 euros / dollars would be ideal). Regarding the specs, I'm looking at, at least, the following :

- 13 inches screen (lighter is better of course)

- 8 Gigs of Ram

- 256 Gigs of storage (SSD or 7200 rpm hard drive)

Some precisions :

I searched a lot of places online to maybe find some older gen laptops (I really do like Dell's XPS and Lenovos ThinkPads) but I haven't been able to find any. I am doing a lot of programming in all sorts of languages, so it would be sort of a critical system that needs to be reliable, that's why I don't really like the idea of buying an already used system for this purpose...

Sorry for this long post, I hope you can help me find what I am desperately looking for, (I have a lots of projects going on at the moment so this is kind of an emergency)

Best Regards

MiniMaxx

P.S : I am French so this is why my English could be somewhat approximative, my apologies for that...

cesarbg · February 18, 2018

I think there is Media Markt in France, right? You should go there and check the available laptops and look for one that seems to fit your budget and specs. They often have deals. I lived in Germany, and the often had budget but vary capable laptops. Saturn is another good option, but I don't know if there are stores in France.

Votivee · February 18, 2018

Not sure if they have it over there, but I am also a student in CS and I use a Lenovo Yoga 3 14" when I'm not at my desktop and it has served me well. I got it used off of ebay for $250 USD from a company that went bankrupt. It has an OK amount of I/O and the boot times for it are incredible.

It has a Core i5, 8gb ram, and a 256gb SSD. The only downside to it is that I don't think it is up-gradable, but I also haven't tried. It's only 3.5 pounds (1.6 kg). Also has an 8+ hour battery.