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Laptop for IT Masters Course Work

TacoSenpai
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I'm getting ready to go back to school which will involve some object oriented programming and the such.  I know my desktop rig is more than good enough however, as is often the case in adulting, working, so on and so forth I'll be moving around quite a bit too and needing to chip away at coursework on the go.  I would be replacing my nearly 10 year old Dell Latitude E6420 (refurbished with a 256gb SSD and 8GB of RAM but the thing heats up and is on its last legs I had to replace the motherboard after it got fried a few years back).  I'm not looking for a big time gaming laptop although I wouldn't be opposed to having a discrete GPU though that's definitely not the focus here.  I know I definitely do not want to go above $1000 and ideally I'm looking between $600 to $800 dollars range. 

 

 

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So dGPU is optional?

 

May I know what's your:

Budget?

Location?

Preferred display size and display quality?

Preferred weight and battery life?

Desktop specs:

Spoiler

AMD Ryzen 5 5600 Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB Gigabyte B550M DS3H mATX

Asrock Challenger Pro OC Radeon RX 6700 XT Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (8Gx2) 3600MHz CL18 Kingston NV2 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD

Montech Century 850W Gold Tecware Nexus Air (Black) ATX Mid Tower

Laptop: Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro 16ACH6

Phone: Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro 8+128

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My cousin and I are CompSci majors and do a decent amount of dev work, we both just purchased ultrabooks.

He got a Asus ZenBook:

https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Slim-i5-8250U-Processor-Fingerprint-UX330UA-AH55/dp/B075N1YHVK/ref=sr_1_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1532443595&sr=1-5&keywords=asus+zenbook+core+i5&refinements=p_n_feature_five_browse-bin%3A7817224011

 

I got the Dell XPS: 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078Z3HJ1X/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Both of these are incredible machines, the zen book is 750 $USD the XPS is 950 $USD.

 

Both will be more than enough to handle IT work.

 

I prefer the XPS because of the touch screen, brighter screen and 10hr+ battery life (lowest brightness setting), but the Zenbook gets around 6-7hr on battery (depending on how you set it up)

Real Life sucks, yes, the graphics are good but the characters are terrible, the story sucks and I can't find any quests.

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Get yourself a laptop with a 8th gen Core i5 or i7. 

 

I've got the XPS 15 with the smaller battery but with a extra Sata SSD for cheaper storage (256+1TB) as my previous laptop had only 256 and I was constantly running out of storage space and constantly moving VM's and other large files around got tiresome and annoying.

8GB should be fine unless you are going to run VM's on it then 16GB would be a bare mininum. 

 

Cheers,

Intel Xeon 1231-v3 | Nvidia Geforce 1080 | 16GB DDR3 | 512GB SSD + 1TB WD Blue 

DELL XPS 15 9650 | Intel Core i7 7700HQ | 32GB DDR4 | 256GB NVME + 1TB SSD

iPhone 8 64GB | OnePlus 6 256GB | 

 

Remember playing Age of Empires II as a kid? The game is still alive and better then ever! @AOCzone.net, @Voobly.com and @Twitch

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29 minutes ago, Wanpug said:

My cousin and I are CompSci majors and do a decent amount of dev work, we both just purchased ultrabooks.

He got a Asus ZenBook:

https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Slim-i5-8250U-Processor-Fingerprint-UX330UA-AH55/dp/B075N1YHVK/ref=sr_1_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1532443595&sr=1-5&keywords=asus+zenbook+core+i5&refinements=p_n_feature_five_browse-bin%3A7817224011

 

I got the Dell XPS: 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078Z3HJ1X/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Both of these are incredible machines, the zen book is 750 $USD the XPS is 950 $USD.

 

Both will be more than enough to handle IT work.

 

I prefer the XPS because of the touch screen, brighter screen and 10hr+ battery life (lowest brightness setting), but the Zenbook gets around 6-7hr on battery (depending on how you set it up)

I actually really really like the price point of that Zenbook though the XPS does look nice too.

 

 

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I would check out the Dell Inspiron 15 5000.  https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-Touchscreen-Flagship-Computer/dp/B07FLSSYVR/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1532445619&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=laptop&refinements=p_n_feature_five_browse-bin%3A7817224011&psc=1

 

You can get a base model w/ 8 Gb Ram for about $650 and it has space for an extra hard drive - you can pop in your old SSD upgrade and get some more use out of it.

 

OR for about $180 more, this Asus has a more powerful CPU and comes with a 1050:

 

https://www.amazon.com/FX503VD-Powerful-i7-7700HQ-Quad-Core-Processor/dp/B076H2J8ZV/ref=sr_1_9?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1532445619&sr=1-9&keywords=laptop&refinements=p_n_feature_five_browse-bin%3A7817224011

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7 minutes ago, LordOTaco said:

I actually really really like the price point of that Zenbook though the XPS does look nice too.

I don't remember about the zen book but the XPS can have its SSD swaped out for a larger one (M.2 2280) also.

 

Edit: Zenbook also has M.2 so should be able to swap out for a larger one.

Real Life sucks, yes, the graphics are good but the characters are terrible, the story sucks and I can't find any quests.

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6 minutes ago, GeoffLucas said:

I would check out the Dell Inspiron 15 5000.  https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-Touchscreen-Flagship-Computer/dp/B07FLSSYVR/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1532445619&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=laptop&refinements=p_n_feature_five_browse-bin%3A7817224011&psc=1

HOLY, that IMO is a awesome deal. that is if it isnt marked up

Real Life sucks, yes, the graphics are good but the characters are terrible, the story sucks and I can't find any quests.

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Dell Inspiron 5000 series and Asus FX series are rather meh. Dell Inspiron 7000 series is overpriced and not worth it.

 

@LordOTaco mind answering these questions:

1 hour ago, ZM Fong said:

So dGPU is optional?

 

May I know what's your:

Budget?

Location?

Preferred display size and display quality?

Preferred weight and battery life?

 

Desktop specs:

Spoiler

AMD Ryzen 5 5600 Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB Gigabyte B550M DS3H mATX

Asrock Challenger Pro OC Radeon RX 6700 XT Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (8Gx2) 3600MHz CL18 Kingston NV2 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD

Montech Century 850W Gold Tecware Nexus Air (Black) ATX Mid Tower

Laptop: Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro 16ACH6

Phone: Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro 8+128

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1 hour ago, ZM Fong said:

So dGPU is optional?

 

May I know what's your:

Budget?

Location?

Preferred display size and display quality?

Preferred weight and battery life?

Yes

Budget 600-800 No more than 1000 USD

USA

1920 x 1080 nothing special

Light if possible, battery life is workable since I'll always be bringing the power brick with me.

 

 

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4 hours ago, ZM Fong said:

Dell Inspiron 5000 series and Asus FX series are rather meh. Dell Inspiron 7000 series is overpriced and not worth it.

True, but I'm going on the skill trade-off assumption.  Powerful, Cheap, Stylish - You can pick 2.

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1 minute ago, GeoffLucas said:

True, but I'm going on the skill trade-off assumption.  Powerful, Cheap, Stylish - You can pick 2.

I actually do like that second asus one.  Its at the upper limit of my budget but for all you get in it its a killer deal.

 

 

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I would just pick a refurbished one with good specs because it doesn´t need to be fancy for school.

 

offtopic:

7 hours ago, LordOTaco said:

I'm getting ready to go back to school which will involve some object oriented programming and the such.

1

Welcome in the club mate! I also went back to school last year and started a CS bachelor degree even tho I am already over 30. My 5-year-old laptop does the job just fine.

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10 hours ago, LordOTaco said:

Yes

Budget 600-800 No more than 1000 USD

USA

1920 x 1080 nothing special

Light if possible, battery life is workable since I'll always be bringing the power brick with me.

Good quality IPS panel:

Spoiler

Asus UX330UA

Lenovo Ideapad 720s 14

Lenovo Ideapad 720s 13 (Intel)

Acer Spin 5 13

Entry level IPS:

Spoiler

Acer Swift 3 14 (SF314-54)

Lenovo Ideapad 530s 15

Note that I have filtered out many options as they aren't worth it

Desktop specs:

Spoiler

AMD Ryzen 5 5600 Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB Gigabyte B550M DS3H mATX

Asrock Challenger Pro OC Radeon RX 6700 XT Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (8Gx2) 3600MHz CL18 Kingston NV2 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD

Montech Century 850W Gold Tecware Nexus Air (Black) ATX Mid Tower

Laptop: Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro 16ACH6

Phone: Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro 8+128

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