Computer Science undergrads, what laptops do you use?
Hey everyone,
Studying CIT at Uni of Surrey in September so starting to prepare for it now. I was thinking of making a custom laptop using my desktop parts although I don't think it needs to be too powerful. I have an Intel i7 & GTX980 with 16GB of ram at home which I think is too much (and I'd most lose out on money that I need). Could someone advise? Thanks!
Studying CIT at Uni of Surrey in September so starting to prepare for it now. I was thinking of making a custom laptop using my desktop parts although I don't think it needs to be too powerful. I have an Intel i7 & GTX980 with 16GB of ram at home which I think is too much (and I'd most lose out on money that I need). Could someone advise? Thanks!
Original post by NSca1998
Hey everyone,
Studying CIT at Uni of Surrey in September so starting to prepare for it now. I was thinking of making a custom laptop using my desktop parts although I don't think it needs to be too powerful. I have an Intel i7 & GTX980 with 16GB of ram at home which I think is too much (and I'd most lose out on money that I need). Could someone advise? Thanks!
Studying CIT at Uni of Surrey in September so starting to prepare for it now. I was thinking of making a custom laptop using my desktop parts although I don't think it needs to be too powerful. I have an Intel i7 & GTX980 with 16GB of ram at home which I think is too much (and I'd most lose out on money that I need). Could someone advise? Thanks!
A second hand Lenovo ThinkPad T440p w/ an i5 4300M, GeForce GT730M, 16GB RAM, 120GB SSD for a Linux distro + 240GB SSD for Windows and a 9 cell battery (sticks out at the back). All in all probably cost me £650 max and you will not find a laptop in PCWorld for that price that's actually decent or has the same build quality as a ThinkPad. The eBay seller included a 5 year on-site next business day warranty too so in case anything happens IBM will send an engineer to my place, next day to get it fixed. Used it once for a faulty trackpoint and the guy came on the 27th Dec when I put in the request on the 24rd Dec.
Also have a docking station hooked up to a monitor + keyboard + mouse so I can transition from a laptop -> desktop-esque environment when I get back to halls.
Super heavy, but the keyboard is great and the processor, despite being a Haswell is probably comparable to the at least the 6th/7th gen ULV CPUs.
(edited 5 years ago)
Custom laptop is overkill. You don't need a mac either. All you need is to spend £500-700 on a decent laptop with an ssd, 4GB RAM (8 pref) and a decent Intel core processor. An integrated GPU is fine.
Currently use the base model HP Probook 430. Terrible screen, clunky HDD, only 4GB of ram BUT it has a phenomenal keyboard, really good battery life (around 7-9hrs) and most importantly only weighs about 1.2kg. It does the job great, although sometimes I wish it had 8GB ram and an SSD but that isn't often.
I would suggest that you need to identify if this laptop is to be your all-around entertainment centre - that is, movies, TV shows, general web browsing - or if it is simply just a workhorse. If it's the latter, and it might be the case if you have a desktop, then all you need are bare bones like a decent SSD, 8GB of ram and a good keyboard. If you're going to be lugging the thing around every day maybe consider a thin and light, but there's no need to push the boat out and splash out on fancy specs.
I genuinely can't stress enough how important a good keyboard is on your laptop. Research thoroughly. Mine feels almost as good as my mechanical keyboard for my desktop.
I would suggest that you need to identify if this laptop is to be your all-around entertainment centre - that is, movies, TV shows, general web browsing - or if it is simply just a workhorse. If it's the latter, and it might be the case if you have a desktop, then all you need are bare bones like a decent SSD, 8GB of ram and a good keyboard. If you're going to be lugging the thing around every day maybe consider a thin and light, but there's no need to push the boat out and splash out on fancy specs.
I genuinely can't stress enough how important a good keyboard is on your laptop. Research thoroughly. Mine feels almost as good as my mechanical keyboard for my desktop.
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