Laptop Recommendations

If you have a Curry's electronic store near you I would recommend visiting them and taking a proper look at a variety of laptops before deciding what you want. If you are looking for a Windows machine I would personally always lean towards an Intel processor powered machine as there's no chance of the compatibility issues that you used to get with AMD and other manufacturers processor. You also need to get a good look at the size and weight of the machine, buying a huge 15" laptop might be great when you are writing an essay in your room, but not so good when you've been lugging it around in your bag all day and trying to balance it on your lap in a lecture... When I took my daughter shopping for laptops a while ago they guy in the Apple store told us that a lot of students buy the bigger machine to start with and then come back at the end of their first or second term to buy a smaller and lighter 13" one. On windows laptops you can get USB-C adaptors that let you connect a proper keyboard and screen up - so when you are using your laptop at your desk it will give you a desktop experience. You also need to think about features like keyboard illumination, it's surprising how hard it gets trying to use a keyboard in a hall with the lights heavily dimmed, so a keyboard backlight might be something you should think about. There's also just basic wear and tear, cheap laptops are often built with plastic chassis that don't put up with being knocked about in a bag, so again, might be worth spending a bit more on one that is more robust. Finally there's memory, consider 16Gb an absolute minimum and get 32Gb if you can, and the hard drive should really be a minimum of 512Gb but absolutely an SSD drive. Personally I like the Lenovo laptops as they are built as business machines and are pretty robust. As you are doing computer science I would double check any IT requirements that your course has, you don't want to invest in a laptop only to find that it's not compatible with what you need for your course, most interfaces can be adapted to USB these days, but still worth checking that they don't specify or exclude something...