Laptop Guide for Students (2019 Update)

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Acsel:
1. in the last week, looking at my ebay link, there are 3 x fully working Lenovo T450 laptops that have sold for less than £150 and a further 3 that have sold for less than £170.

I looked at the last 12 laptops to have sold in your link, which is roughly a weeks worth. They sold at the following prices:
£350
£170
£52 (parts only)
£230
£130
£56 (parts only)
£350
£200
£204
£33 (parts only)
£175 (4GB RAM)
£220

So IDK where (or even if) you're looking, and that was only a really quick glance. 4 of the laptops sold below £150, but 3 of them were listed as for parts only. The one that sold for £130 was on bids, has an amazing 1366x768 display, a 500GB HDD and a battery life of just 4 hours. The £175 only comes with 4GB of RAM. And the majority of the rest came in at over £200. If we average the 9 working models, that's £225. That'd be higher if you started ignoring inconsistent things like bids or the 4GB RAM model.

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

How many do you need to sell a week on UK eBay for you to decide that anyone can buy them now - as in now in the next week - for £150ish?

How many have sold at a price is irrelevant. The thing that determines what you can buy something for is what it is actually listed at when you wanted to buy it. And taking a brief look I can't see any models immediately available at £150. I can see the odd one that you might get lucky and bid on, but not anything consistent. Unless your advice here is to simply wait indefinitely and hope one of these subpar laptops becomes available at some point.

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

2. You might call a Microsoft Type Cover a proper keyboard. I would call it a piece of junk. Just as I would call every laptop keyboard ever made a piece of junk. It takes a huge dose of pragmatism to use laptop keyboards.

Then you're being exceptionally narrow minded. There are some great laptop keyboards. The Surface Pro Typecover keyboard is considered one of the better laptop keyboards. Thinkpads are well renowned for having decent keyboards. This isn't even just my opinion, it's considered this way industry wide. Hell there are laptops with proper mechanical keyboards, albeit not many of them. You make it sound as though using any laptop keyboard is somehow a monumental inconvenience. It isn't. I'm not even 100% sure you've used pragmatic in the correct context here.

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

3. You are welcome to have whatever opinion you like on anything. I am not going to argue with your opinion.

Seems like you're constantly going out of your way solely to argue with my opinion :rolleyes:

Surely if you didn't want to argue, you wouldn't be in my thread making these posts to begin with.

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

I am also not going to argue with the PCMark 8 benchmark test results that show that the far cheaper T450 is the slightly better laptop for basic office tasks.

So you're going to provide random cherry picked evidence (that isn't even correct) and then refuse to debate it when it's called out? Seems like a waste of time and really goes to show how exceptionally weak your argument really is. Reminds me of when I did that more thorough testing in your silly "boot to TSR" thread and you simply ignored it.

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

4. The departments responsible for buying laptops for large organisations are not fools. If you think there's no wisdom to be learnt from looking at corporate laptop buying policies, then that is up to you.

It's really difficult to take you seriously when you say things like this, as though departments responsible for buying laptops never make mistakes. I'm not saying they're wrong, or that the Thinkpad wasn't a good device back in 2015. But you completely missed the point. Corporate decisions from 2015 are pretty difficult to apply to students in 2019. If you think they're somehow compatible then you're fooling yourself. "It was a great business laptop in 2015" isn't a valid argument.

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

5. Please read what I said about "ALL" laptop keyboards, monitors and mice again. Nobody with a laptop, including a T450 NEEDS to buy an external monitor, mouse and keyboard. However EVERYONE with ANY laptop ever made, with a secure base of operations, eg an office, would benefit from these things. Coming back to the coporate IT world, it is standard practise to give every laptop user a docking station, keyboard and mouse on their desk. It makes a lot of sense in the corporate world to do this. It makes a lot of sense in the student world to do this too, where their "office" is their desk at home.

Stopped caring at "corporate IT world". Also have you ever met a student? Quite often their office is not their desk at home. It may surprise you to learn that many students actually buy laptops for the portability aspect. And indeed most students get by perfectly fine without a range of peripherals. But if you've got a constant place to work, a monitor, a mouse and a keyboard you know what they'd also benefit from? A desktop *gasps*

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

6. The vast majority of Lenovo T450's sold came with the 9 cell battery. The weight with the 9 cell battery is 1.8 kgs. That weight is acceptable for most users.
I have no idea why Anandtech tested the version with the small crappy battery. It doesn't matter. What is important is that the Lenovo T4X0 series of laptops come with an internal 3 cell battery and the (popular) option of an external 6 cell battery option. And that this gives this series of laptops the best battery life of any laptops ever made.

The best battery life of any laptop ever made is a hilarious claim.

Pretty sure you don't get to decide what weight someone else is happy with.

If most Thinkpads came with the larger capacity battery, and it's such a great selling point, then why does only one of the sellers in the link you provided both to mention it? Seems pretty difficult to clarify. Not to mention saying "the vast majority were sold with the larger battery" seems like another unsubstantiated claim. Can you provide your evidence showing the sales of at least 51% of T450 laptops ever made?

If we actually try and extrapolate the battery life from these results:
This was tested with a 46Wh battery. The largest battery you're likely to get in a laptop is 99Wh due to travel restrictions
In actuality, the extra battery bumps the total capacity up to 95Wh (by adding 72Wh). That's close enough that we'll simply double the score from 449 to 898.
The Surface Pro reported 607, so the ThinkPad with a substantially larger battery only just manages 50% battery life.
This is hardly ground breaking though, adding a bigger battery improves battery life. The Thinkpad (a proper laptop) has better battery life than a Surface with a much smaller battery.

So what was your point here? A laptop can beat out the Surface by having a larger battery? The Surface Pro is known for low battery life as a result of the smaller capacity.

And of course, used batteries aren't as good as their original counterparts. So have fun getting that battery life.

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

It is obvious to even trhe most non technical of users when their laptop battery needs replacing. When you unplug it from the mains power the battery doesn't last long - or not at all in the worst cases. A brand new replacement external 65 WHr battery for a Lenovo T450 costs £27 and takes five seconds to fit with no tools required.

And might be something you need immediately on purchasing your used Thinkpad off eBay. Assuming you even get the larger battery to begin with since most sellers don't bother mentioning it.

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

7. It is not just a "claim" that most laptop failures are caused by "user error". It's a statistical fact. How big a sample size would you want in order to be confident that the statistics represent laptops, in general?

Well it'd be nice if you referenced some actual research. I don't doubt it's correct, fleshy people most often cause issues. I'm just saying you keep making wild claims with zero proof.

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

8. The value of a warranty does not necessarily go up as the price of the original product goes up. The value of a warranty depends only on the likelihood that something covered by warranty repair would go wrong combined with the cost of replacing that warranty part.

Replacing more expensive devices costs more money. Basic fact. Nobody cares about the odds of their device failing when it happens. Because it does happen. Can't really moan if something you didn't pay for saves you money in that scenario. Would I explicitly pay for warranty? Usually no. Is it a nice to have free thing with new devices? Obviously.

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

9. Coming back to my hammer analogy. I don't care if my hammer is scratched. I also don't care if my laptop has a scratched lid or baseplate. The hammer and the laptop - they're both just tools to do a job.

Congrats, you don't care. Many others do. Many others do care about getting a new device. Or getting a device with performance headroom that'll last longer. Or getting what they think they're paying for. Or getting a device that just works without having to faff buying other parts. If you don't care about the quality of your goods then that's up to you, but it literally only applies to you. The fact that you're happy with a £200 scratched eBay laptop with a crappy battery that needed hardware upgrades doesn't somehow mean it's now an amazing choice for everyone else.

Reply 61

TSR George

Dell's entry level XPS 15 can now be had for £1249 (before student discount), making it a smidge cheaper than their entry level XPS 13.

After student discount this prices goes down to around £1125. For professionals that want 16GB of RAM, a DIY upgrade would cost around £75. For anyone looking to pick up a high end, lightweight, desktop replacement style laptop, this is an exceptionally good deal and something I'd be jumping on myself if I actually needed one.

Ahem

Just get a mbp and be done with it. Yes they’re a rip off but they really cannot be beaten, especially in ways you can’t quantify easily e.g. trackpad

Reply 64

spotify95

At those prices, I'd have taken the Pro 6 over the Laptop 2.

The Pro is more portable and slightly cheaper, the type cover is still a decent keyboard (I have a Pro 3 and it is fine, and chances are they've improved it since then) but the Pro is actually repairable, to a degree, with the right tools.
It is a bit of a pain, but you can actually take out the Pro's display and get to the battery, should it ever need replacing.
Whereas with the Laptop, you have to carve your way through it (meaning it won't ever look the same).
And unless you look after your battery properly (which, let's face it, most students do not), your battery will only last 3 years before it has lost a significant amount of its capacity.

Though whatever the case, if you're buying a Surface device, make sure to select your configuration based on the maximum amount you think you'll ever need. Don't buy a 128GB model thinking that you can upgrade later on. You can't (the SSD/RAM/CPU are soldered). And external hard drives will reduce the portability of the device, which is why I still prefer large capacity HDDs over smaller SSDs for a main computing device. My 128GB SSD on the Pro 3 is fine because I use it for portable computing, to compliment my laptop - not to replace it.

Reply 65

spotify95

Original post by 100yoMAGApede

Just get a mbp and be done with it. Yes they’re a rip off but they really cannot be beaten, especially in ways you can’t quantify easily e.g. trackpad

Macbook Pro's are very overpriced for what they do, and don't, offer, especially with the focus on a limited amount of ports (USB-C only), a new operating system to learn if you've been accustomed to Windows, and the fact that you can get a Windows machine with similar spec for less.
Even more premium Windows devices (such as the Surface Pro 6) are cheaper than the Macbook Pro and offer good performance in the form of a quad core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD (higher storage available) and a high resolution display - with more down to earth, traditional laptops costing even less. (I paid £500 for my now 3 year old HP 15 laptop - 4th gen i5, 16GB RAM (previously 8GB), 2TB HDD, 1366x768 display (not a problem for me) - try finding a similar spec MBP for that sort of money.)

And anyways, if you know exactly what laptop you are looking for (such as a Macbook) then you don't really need a "Laptop Guide for Students" to tell you what you need!

Reply 66

Dunnig Kruger

This Lenovo laptop has an 8250u CPU and 8 GB RAM:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lenovo-Thinkpad-X280-12-5-i5-8250U-8GB-RAM-Laptop-NO-HDD-NO-CHARGER-SEE-PHOTOS/273845523417?hash=item3fc27713d9:g :h:

DkAAOSwmphc1XvT&frcectupt=true
It will sell for more than the £41 current bid. How much more remains to be seen. All it needs is £35 for a brand new 256 GB SSD and £36 for a charger. The crack in the casing will not affect the functionality of the laptop, nor the quality of life in using it. It should affect the final bid price.

This laptop has an 8250U CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, Windows 10 Pro and MS Office 2016:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LENOVO-THINKPAD-T580-LAPTOP-INTEL-CORE-i5-8250U-1-6GHz-8GB-DDR4-256GB-SSD-15/382953675612?hash=item5929d15b5c:g:vhEAAOSwAjhc2vDg&frcectupt=true
It remains to be seen what the final bid price will be...
Edit: sold for £527. That's too much. Not worth buying at that price.

This laptop is new, has an 8250u CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, Windows 10 Pro with recovery disk
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-ProBook-640-G4-14-LCD-Notebook-i5-8250U-256SSD-8GB-Win10P-3UN81ET-ABU-New/223515474157?epid=16020384161&hash=item340a8f78ed:g:lmEAAOSwJLRc2dj2&frcectupt=true
It remains to be seen what the final bid price will be...
Edit: sold for £445.

For a total of £335 plus a couple of minutes of simple screwdriver work, this laptop has an 8250U CPU, would have 8 GB RAM, a 250 GB SSD, plus an extra internal 500 GB hard drive, Windows 10 Pro
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-ProBook-430-G5-13-3-Laptop-Intel-Core-i5-8250U-1-6-GHz-4GB-RAM-500GB-HDD/273789489136?hash=item3fbf200ff0:g:WuQAAOSwOz5coof1

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 67

Molseh

FeelsBadMan

On a serious note, currently planning for September and curious as to what you would suggest for my upcoming studies.
I hadn't really given much thought to how a Comp Sci course will be taught to be honest, kinda assuming a lot of labs and not so much lecture style note taking.
Do you think purchasing a small laptop purely for note-taking would suffice or would a Surface be the ideal solution?
I currently have a 15" Alienware laptop I never use but is too big+noisy for a lecture and a £2.5k Desktop I use for everything.

Money isn't really a factor but I have never really used my company Surface Pro for anything other than presentations/email, but it seems like the ideal solution. At least in my mind.

Thoughts?

Reply 68

TSR George

Original post by spotify95

Bearing in mind that this pricing was a month ago, I somewhat disagree. IMO the £50 extra you pay to get a bigger screen, a big battery and arguably a better typing experience is worth it. Both devices are small and light enough to be considered portable so unless you need to shave off every gram possible, the Pro doesn't really have a lot going for it in terms of weight. Many people would already consider the laptop plenty light for their needs.

I'd also question just how repairable either model is. Neither model is known for it's repairability (check out the ifixit guides) due to a total lack of screws and use of adhesive. Not to mention, with everything being soldered there's no good reason to be opening it up unless you need to repair it anyway. And most people are not going to be doing that themselves as they'll have neither the tools nor the knowledge to do so. Even in regular laptops, where you can get at the cuts with nothing more than a screwdriver in most cases, you won't find a whole lot of people opening them up to make repairs or upgrades.

So IMO there would be a hugely compelling argument to buy the Pro over the Laptop in this scenario, if you were looking for a primary device. Of course the Pro does excel in one area and that's the fact it has a touchscreen. It can be used as a tablet if you want. But to truly take advantage of that you'll be needing the pen. Buying Microsoft's official pen will wipe out that £50 saving. This of course all comes down to use case though, but in most cases the laptop form factor is the more beneficial option as a primary device. You say yourself that your Surface compliments your laptop rather than replacing it and that's the exact use case I have. The Surface Pro lineup is great, they're really excellent devices. But all things considered, there's just enough little niggly things that make them difficult to recommend a primary devices in a lot of cases.

Reply 69

TSR George

Original post by 100yoMAGApede

Just get a mbp and be done with it. Yes they’re a rip off but they really cannot be beaten, especially in ways you can’t quantify easily e.g. trackpad

They can and do get beaten in plenty of ways. The trackpad is one of the only things that really stands out about MacBooks, and paying a £500+ premium and/or getting substantially reduced hardware isn't a valid tradeoff for most people. A good trackpad doesn't justify crappy hardware. Not to mention their trackpads might be decent, but their keyboards are another matter. And I personally use my keyboard far more than my trackpad.

Not to mention the whole idea that someone should just buy a MacBook Pro (a £1000+ device) and be done with it is laughable. Most people aren't looking or able to spend that kind of money.

Reply 70

TSR George

Original post by Molseh

FeelsBadMan

Makes you wonder about people who feel the need to go for 17.3 inches when 15.6 just isn't big enough...

Original post by Molseh

On a serious note, currently planning for September and curious as to what you would suggest for my upcoming studies.
I hadn't really given much thought to how a Comp Sci course will be taught to be honest, kinda assuming a lot of labs and not so much lecture style note taking.
Do you think purchasing a small laptop purely for note-taking would suffice or would a Surface be the ideal solution?
I currently have a 15" Alienware laptop I never use but is too big+noisy for a lecture and a £2.5k Desktop I use for everything.

Money isn't really a factor but I have never really used my company Surface Pro for anything other than presentations/email, but it seems like the ideal solution. At least in my mind.

Thoughts?

Honestly I'd give you the same advice I give to anyone that wants a laptop for note taking. Don't bother. Pen and paper is still king when it comes to note taking. For reference, you're probably going to have a lot more lectures than you are thinking. I wouldn't be surprised if you have a 50:50 split.

In terms of the best device for taking notes digitally, a Surface Pro is going to outclass a laptop. The ability to draw diagrams rather than simply typing notes is extremely useful. But it's awfully difficult to justify spending so much on what amounts to expensive pen and paper. Not to mention there's no issues of keeping your pen and paper charged, it's far lighter and it encourages you to do something with your notes other than sticking them in a folder on your desktop.

The Surface Pro is the ideal solution to a problem you don't have.

Personally I would wait until you're at uni and see what issues you may have. If you find that you're constantly wanting to take your own device to classes, or you just want something more portable than your Alienware laptop, then by all means consider your options. But don't try and buy in preparation for what you may need. Buy a device that does actually solve a problem for you, when you have said problem and know what the solution is.

Good luck when you do start your degree.

Reply 71

Molseh

Thanks for the swift response, as always!

My plan so far had been to pen and paper it but I have this uncontrollable urge to buy tech I don't really need!
I think I will try my best and follow the good advice to get there and then make a judgement on the value to buying a Surface, who knows by then the Pro 7 might have been announced.

Reply 72

TSR George

Original post by Molseh

Ah I know that urge all too well. For now I'd try and wait. Typically it doesn't make a ton of sense to buy a device until you need it, simply because you have no idea what the market and your user requirements will be like in that time.

As a piece of hardware, the Surface Pro is IMO an excellent device and there are worse things to buy. It's a great device to have as an add on to whatever you normally use and I doubt you'd have many regrets if you did buy. It just makes sense to wait for now. Not to mention it's back to standard pricing and if you don't need it now you might as well wait until there's a sale.

Reply 73

TSR George

Dell's discounts continue, with up to £500 off models in the XPS range. You can also get student discount for additional savings.

The base model Silver Surface Laptop 2 is down to £799 again, although you only get 128GB of storage at that price. Trying to up that storage to 256GB sees the price jump back up to the regular £1200+, and even if that is the regular price it's a hard sell when you can just get the 128GB model for £400 less and supplement the storage with an external solution. Again, student discounts may be applicable.

Reply 74

spotify95

£50 more for a bigger screen isn't that bad, if you want to use it as a main device, but I probably wouldn't want to use a Surface Laptop as my main device either, given the repairability (or lack of). Whilst both devices score very lowly (as you mention), the Pro can at least be opened and closed without damage, so when the battery does eventually wear out, the device won't have to be completely chucked out. Yes, you do need iOpeners, picks and the like, which most people won't have access to, but at least it can be done. The only option regarding the Laptop is a lot of gaffa tape to hold down the broken Alcantara...

The battery on the Laptop isn't actually much bigger than the Pro 6. The Pro 6 has a 45Wh battery and the Laptop 2 a 45.2Wh battery (according to iFixit for both). Therefore, any differences in battery life will come to power management, and not due to the capacity of the battery.

At least with standard laptops, you can repair them easily enough. I successfully opened up and upgraded the RAM in my HP laptop (HP 15 from 2015), from 8GB to 16GB. The same upgrade is planned on a couple of other laptops I have - this cannot be done with either a Pro or a Laptop. Therefore, I couldn't possibly recommend the Pro or the Laptop as a primary device, but as you mentioned before, they are good secondary devices, and the difference between the Pro and the Laptop is whether you want a touchscreen or not (IMO, the touchscreen of the Pro comes in nice and handy for on the go portability). I have the 128GB Pro 3 model and 128GB is fine for what I need it to do, because all of my storage and most programs are on my HP laptop with a 2TB mechanical.

Reply 75

username612415

Original post by spotify95

the difference between the Pro and the Laptop is whether you want a touchscreen or not

All of Microsoft's Surface products have a touchscreen, that's why they call them Surface products.

Reply 76

spotify95

Okay, I was just going by what Acsel had stated before:
"Of course the Pro does excel in one area and that's the fact it has a touchscreen."
So I assumed the Laptop didn't - though if the Laptop does have a touchscreen, it's another added bonus. I'd probably still get the Pro though thanks to its versatility.

Reply 77

TSR George

Original post by spotify95

I was actually under the impression that the Surface Laptop didn't have a touchscreen. But IMO touch on tablets is drastically more useful than touch on laptops. On a tablet it feels like a useful feature. On a laptop it feels like a gimmick. I'd amend my previous statement to be the Pro excels because it has the touchscreen in a tablet form factor.

Reply 78

Big_Smoke9

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/hp-pavilion-14-ce1510sa-14-intel-core-i5-laptop-128-gb-ssd-silver-10189248-pdt.html

Would you recommend this laptop? Dentistry student so will need a good laptop for 5 years at least. Can pay more if needed but am literally just looking for a laptop that will ‘do the job’, don’t really need much extras. Basically just looking for a laptop that will let me do basic task with alright speeds, good for watching lecture videos on and won’t become a vegetable after a year.

Reply 79

spotify95

Original post by Big_Smoke9

Looks decent, but for £500 I'd expect more than 128GB storage. Is there anything else on offer, with the same specs, that gives 256GB or more of storage?
Otherwise you'll be carrying an external hard drive with you every time you need to load up a document...

Most decent laptops won't become a vegetable after a year; my HP laptop is 3.5 years old and still fine for the vast majority of tasks.