Good budget friendly laptop?
For university use, preferably something that will last the duration of my studies (3 years) and under £500
When buying laptops, its important to be completely honest with yourself about what you want them for and also the way in which you are going to treat them.
If you're going to be an undergrad in a regular university, with most things being cloud based, unless you are taking a subject that requires some access to specialist programmes - art, design, engineering, CS and so on - then you don't need a lot of power or a lot of storage.
The next thing is that almost all students will spend a significant amount of time streaming videos and using the internet generally. This doesn't usually require much power, but you might want some reasonable speakers.
Finally, the way in which the laptop will be treated is a consideration. Very likely it will be carried around constantly and knocked about in a non-protective bag. You don't want it to be too heavy or delicate with big fan cooling systems.
In general, if you are not going to be playing any modern games - so anything other than Stardew Valley - I see no reason to not go with a small 11-13" netbook. They are really cheap - often in the £200-300 range and you can get a folding touchscreen one with reasonable speakers for that. You may have to get yourself a student Office 365 account if your institution insists on office files, or you could just do conversions from docs, although submitting those can be a bit hairy if there are diagrams. The main thing about Netbooks is that they're so cheap it doesn't matter if it gets broken or lost - you can just buy another one.
If you're going to be an undergrad in a regular university, with most things being cloud based, unless you are taking a subject that requires some access to specialist programmes - art, design, engineering, CS and so on - then you don't need a lot of power or a lot of storage.
The next thing is that almost all students will spend a significant amount of time streaming videos and using the internet generally. This doesn't usually require much power, but you might want some reasonable speakers.
Finally, the way in which the laptop will be treated is a consideration. Very likely it will be carried around constantly and knocked about in a non-protective bag. You don't want it to be too heavy or delicate with big fan cooling systems.
In general, if you are not going to be playing any modern games - so anything other than Stardew Valley - I see no reason to not go with a small 11-13" netbook. They are really cheap - often in the £200-300 range and you can get a folding touchscreen one with reasonable speakers for that. You may have to get yourself a student Office 365 account if your institution insists on office files, or you could just do conversions from docs, although submitting those can be a bit hairy if there are diagrams. The main thing about Netbooks is that they're so cheap it doesn't matter if it gets broken or lost - you can just buy another one.
Microsoft surface go 2 is a decent option. You can use them as a laptop or tablet and they are powerful enough for studying, streaming, multitasking etc. You can get one for around £400 if you shop around.
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