Needing a College Laptop

[Kedris21]

Hey forum people! I'm about to start up college in the Fall and I was wondering how useful it would be to get myself a laptop just for college purposes. I already have a gaming laptop, but the problem with it is that it is rather bulky and hard to carry around easily, as well as taking up to 8+ minutes for me to actually start running programs, which would be 8 minutes of taking notes or whatnot that I wouldn't be able to do. 

 

I'm not going into a computer science or visual design class, so I don't really need something hardcore that can render out videos or anything, just a general business degree, so I'm not going to be needing the most computational power. I just want a laptop where I can open it up, and immediately start taking notes or access my calendar. 

 

As far as what type of laptop I want, I don't really care the brand of whoever makes it, as long as it gets up and running immediately and I don't have to wait around while it loads. I do have a preference to using a Windows Operating System over an Apple MacBook, but I'm not opposed to getting a Mac. 

 

I've also seen that laptops come with a pad and stylus that you can use to write out your notes. I was wondering if this is actually a viable option for note-taking, and which ones are preferred. 

 

Please help me out if anyone can give me some pointers. I've tried self researching things like this, but I don't really keep up with specs and how they operate. Most of the websites I do look at are top 10 laptops garbage or I just get flooded with so many I don't even know what to look at. Thanks to anyone who can help!

 

tldr : Need laptop that runs ASAP and advice on it

[IntMD]

57 minutes ago, Kedris21 said:

-snip-

How much do you actually have to spend on it? What size screen do you want? 

 

Also, dictation machine/microphone is what I would go with rather than a pen/stylus. That way you can listen to what they are saying in lectures and then play them back/take notes whenever you want/just take notes of things they are showing on the boards, if they don't provide you with a download for the items they show etc.

[pallen98]

I honestly use my gaming laptop for school, but Im in an engineering degree so I do need some power. On the subject of getting a laptop with a pen or stylus I would recommenced against it. The desks at my university are pretty small and I always see people dropping there stuff. For general note taking or office style programs I would recommend looking into a more ultrabook type laptop because the battery life is much more viable to use for a full day of school without being able to plug in. If I had my choice I would choose something along the lines of a asus zenbook or a dell xps 13 or dell latitude which is more of a business class laptop, but do come in some more rugged configurations.

[Firewrath9]

1 hour ago, Kedris21 said:

Hey forum people! I'm about to start up college in the Fall and I was wondering how useful it would be to get myself a laptop just for college purposes. I already have a gaming laptop, but the problem with it is that it is rather bulky and hard to carry around easily, as well as taking up to 8+ minutes for me to actually start running programs, which would be 8 minutes of taking notes or whatnot that I wouldn't be able to do. 

 

I'm not going into a computer science or visual design class, so I don't really need something hardcore that can render out videos or anything, just a general business degree, so I'm not going to be needing the most computational power. I just want a laptop where I can open it up, and immediately start taking notes or access my calendar. 

 

As far as what type of laptop I want, I don't really care the brand of whoever makes it, as long as it gets up and running immediately and I don't have to wait around while it loads. I do have a preference to using a Windows Operating System over an Apple MacBook, but I'm not opposed to getting a Mac. 

 

I've also seen that laptops come with a pad and stylus that you can use to write out your notes. I was wondering if this is actually a viable option for note-taking, and which ones are preferred. 

 

Please help me out if anyone can give me some pointers. I've tried self researching things like this, but I don't really keep up with specs and how they operate. Most of the websites I do look at are top 10 laptops garbage or I just get flooded with so many I don't even know what to look at. Thanks to anyone who can help!

 

tldr : Need laptop that runs ASAP and advice on it

the gunmetal version of the razer blade stealth 13inch looks nice, but not to flashy, just a gray logo on a gray bg, the razer blades are tiny and have very good performance

[GoodBytes]

- Moved to Laptop forum section -

 

[GoodBytes]

What is your budget?

And what degree will you be doing?

 

The new Surface Go mid range looks quite interesting if you are on a budget but you need the pen.

In my studies at university (and work now), the Surface Pro has been a massive welcome. Thin, light, yet (well the Pro) powerful, with a great keyboard and touchpad. The big selling point was the pen. I can import class PDF documents, and then add notes, highlight with ease in class, add note by typing (as it is faster), but when comes formulas, graphs, diagrams and such well the pen is here to the rescue.

 

Of course, Surface Go is not out yet, but will be in time before school starts, and we have no reviews yet, so we need to wait for those.

I just wanted to through this device in, for consideration. You can go to many electronic stores and checkout the Surface Pro now (the Go should also show up), so you can see the device in person, and how the pen works.

[Kedris21]

23 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

What is your budget?

And what degree will you be doing?

 

The new Surface Go mid range looks quite interesting if you are on a budget but you need the pen.

In my studies at university (and work now), the Surface Pro has been a massive welcome. Thin, light, yet (well the Pro) powerful, with a great keyboard and touchpad. The big selling point was the pen. I can import class PDF documents, and then add notes, highlight with ease in class, add note by typing (as it is faster), but when comes formulas, graphs, diagrams and such well the pen is here to the rescue.

 

Of course, Surface Go is not out yet, but will be in time before school starts, and we have no reviews yet, so we need to wait for those.

I just wanted to through this device in, for consideration. You can go to many electronic stores and checkout the Surface Pro now (the Go should also show up), so you can see the device in person, and how the pen works.

I looked at the Surface pro, but I saw that the latest was $2200 (waaaay out of my price range), and how good is the Surface Go supposed to be?

[genexis_x]

Where are you from? Budget?

[GoodBytes]

14 minutes ago, Kedris21 said:

I looked at the Surface pro, but I saw that the latest was $2200 (waaaay out of my price range), and how good is the Surface Go supposed to be?

huh?

The Surface Pro, ignoring the 300$ down special passing right now, is 1300$ + pen (99$) + keyboard (99$) = 1,500$.

You have a 10% student discount as well (applies to everything), so $1,350 before taxes.

 

256GB of storage, Core i5, 8GB of RAM, plenty of everything.

If you can wait, you can wait for the refresh which will probably occur at the end of the year, to get 8th gen CPU, and enjoy a true quad core with HT, instead of a dual core with HT.

 

[Kedris21]

37 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

What is your budget?

And what degree will you be doing?

 

The new Surface Go mid range looks quite interesting if you are on a budget but you need the pen.

In my studies at university (and work now), the Surface Pro has been a massive welcome. Thin, light, yet (well the Pro) powerful, with a great keyboard and touchpad. The big selling point was the pen. I can import class PDF documents, and then add notes, highlight with ease in class, add note by typing (as it is faster), but when comes formulas, graphs, diagrams and such well the pen is here to the rescue.

 

Of course, Surface Go is not out yet, but will be in time before school starts, and we have no reviews yet, so we need to wait for those.

I just wanted to through this device in, for consideration. You can go to many electronic stores and checkout the Surface Pro now (the Go should also show up), so you can see the device in person, and how the pen works.

Also, after looking more into the Surface Go, what is the difference in their $399 64 GB and 4 GB of RAM and their $549 128 GB and 8 GB of RAM. Is it really worth $150 to get that much extra storage space and RAM? 

[GoodBytes]

11 minutes ago, Kedris21 said:

Also, after looking more into the Surface Go, what is the difference in their $399 64 GB and 4 GB of RAM and their $549 128 GB and 8 GB of RAM. Is it really worth $150 to get that much extra storage space and RAM? 

The 64GB model uses eMMC storage, while the 128GB uses an actual SSD, so the performance should be vastly superior that should be very noticeable.

eMMC is more like a slow crappy HDD.. maybe the last gen eMMC (assuming it uses it) is like, at best, your fast typical HDD. I would like to see benchmarks of course, as I can only speak based on past data which is outdated with Atom based Windows powered tablets back in Windows 8 days when Intel was still making Atom's, but I like to be safe.

 

And considering that these devices are not upgradable, it doesn't hurt having 8GB of RAM in your hand, and minimum 128GB to make OS upgrade, software install, and managing data, all easier. With the 64GB, you'll probably will need to run and get a fast high capacity microSD card (slot is under the kicks-stand, so nothing sticks out and won't/shouldn't fall out). So spending the extra on that micro-SD card, might as well get the SSD model and not deal with 2 drive, and have that micro-SD card for when you really need that extra space that doesn't need performance (music files, videos, old documents, backup (example: File History), etc.)

 

[Kedris21]

5 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

The 64GB model uses eMMC storage, while the 128GB uses an actual SSD, so the performance should be vastly superior that should be very noticeable.

eMMC is more like a slow crappy HDD.. maybe the last gen eMMC (assuming it uses it) is like, at best, your fast typical HDD. I would like to see benchmarks of course, as I can only speak based on past data which is outdated with Atom based Windows powered tablets back in Windows 8 days when Intel was still making Atom's, but I like to be safe.

 

And considering that these devices are not upgradable, it doesn't hurt having 8GB of RAM in your hand, and minimum 128GB to make OS upgrade, software install, and managing data, all easier. With the 64GB, you'll probably will need to run and get a fast high capacity microSD card (slot is under the kicks-stand, so nothing sticks out and won't/shouldn't fall out). So spending the extra on that micro-SD card, might as well get the SSD model and not deal with 2 drive, and have that micro-SD card for when you really need that extra space that doesn't need performance (music files, videos, old documents, backup (example: File History), etc.)

 

So if I was satisfied with what the Go has to offer, is there a reason to want the Pro or not? Is there some huge nominal feature or benchmark it will give me?

[rmac52]

21 minutes ago, Kedris21 said:

Also, after looking more into the Surface Go, what is the difference in their $399 64 GB and 4 GB of RAM and their $549 128 GB and 8 GB of RAM. Is it really worth $150 to get that much extra storage space and RAM? 

I have had a surface pro 4 for a few years now.  I originally had the 4 Gb version but I found that I was running out of ram.  8 GB is the sweet spot for me(for a laptop).

Also remember how much space windows takes up.  I have the 256 GB drive and it's a good size for me to keep some permentant files,  any working files and programs.  Everything else is stored on my server.  I would not recommend going below 120 GB for a boot drive. 

You can always throw in a large micro sd card.  But remember that is going to be really slow storage. 

[GoodBytes]

42 minutes ago, Kedris21 said:

So if I was satisfied with what the Go has to offer, is there a reason to want the Pro or not? Is there some huge nominal feature or benchmark it will give me?

Well, as a big change: the Pro will get you 256GB SSD option (and larger capacity but those are way too overpriced), much faster CPU with TurboBoost as well.

 

As smaller details but perhaps significant.

• A model refresh should be released or announced in Fall, this means that the Pro will get Intel's 8th gen CPU, passing from a dual core U series CPU to a quad core U series CPU. The Go is a 7th gen dual core CPU. Usually those low-end chips are the last to be updated by Intel, so I don't expect an update to them until next year, and the device refresh 1 year from now, and that assuming Microsoft sticks with Intel, and not go with the Qualcomm ARM CPU if the Snapdragon 1000 is released in time (this new CPU is targeting laptops, and so its architecture was modified to not be aggressively power efficient to favor performance, clocked faster and expects a heatsink). The 950 is expected to be released later this year, which is a mid-way chip, a modified and slightly overclocked 845.

Other smaller difference:

• The Pro uses LPDDR4 RAM, while the Go has LPDDR3. Intel CPU limitation, the Pentium in the Go only support LPDDR3 despite being based on 7th gen Core i CPU. I don't think it really matters, to be honest. CPU will probably be the bottleneck... and it won't affect you in note taking, web surfing, music playing, video watching.... It's not the few MHz increase in the RAM that wlll do anything.. the bigger advantage even for Core i7 CPUs is the lower power draw of LPDDR4 over LPDDR3.
• The Pro has a Larger screen (12inch instead of 10inch)
• The Pro has USB Type-A port (we don't know if the next model coming at the Fall/end-of-the year will have USB Type-C only like the Go, or have both Type-A and C. And, as for Thunderbolt, so far no Surface devices supports it for some reason, including the Surface Book 2).
• Both devices are fanless (beside the Core i7 model for some reason.... i7 is the same dual core as the i5 model, just a bit faster GPU, so technically the power draw is increase and needs it, but you won't be gaming, so yea... Sure ti helps reduce throttling under extended load, I won't deny that, but it doesn't illuminate it in any case, due to the form factor, and you have a more powerful system for gaming and other extended intensive tasks.)