Join in on our 'Guess the Rep' game here! >>

Which laptop for CS & AI?

For undergraduate degree… I currently use Linux (Ubuntu currently) as my main OS, and presume a dual-boot of that and windows would be best so l can access software needed for uni on windows without issue? A Thinkpad? But which one...

Thanks!

Reply 1

TNGFR

Original post by Haribo22

Budget?

Reply 2

Dunnig Kruger

Buy a fully working good condition (including all the keys on the keyboard) Dell Latitude 5520 (with the 11th Intel CPU) from ebay for about £200.
They can have 2 internal SSD's. Buy and install a 2nd SSD.
Optionally buy (used from ebay) and install a 2nd RAM stick (that matches the existing one) if it only has 1 RAM stick installed.

Buy and install a replacement battery when the existing battery gets too annoying in terms of holding charge.

Put Linux on the faster SSD. Windows on the other. The laptop should come with a Windows licence built into the motherboard.

You may well find that you rarely, if ever, boot into Windows.

Reply 3

TNGFR

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

Buy a fully working good condition (including all the keys on the keyboard) Dell Latitude 5520 (with the 11th Intel CPU) from ebay for about £200.
They can have 2 internal SSD's. Buy and install a 2nd SSD.
Optionally buy (used from ebay) and install a 2nd RAM stick (that matches the existing one) if it only has 1 RAM stick installed.
Buy and install a replacement battery when the existing battery gets too annoying in terms of holding charge.
Put Linux on the faster SSD. Windows on the other. The laptop should come with a Windows licence built into the motherboard.
You may well find that you rarely, if ever, boot into Windows.

If they plan to work with AI and deep learning models on a regular basis, they really are going to want something newer with proper AI hardware.

Reply 4

Dunnig Kruger

Original post by TNGFR

If they plan to work with AI and deep learning models on a regular basis, they really are going to want something newer with proper AI hardware.

Says who?

It's only a degree course. Not a James Bond master plan to take over the world with AI.

Reply 5

TNGFR

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

Says who?
It's only a degree course. Not a James Bond master plan to take over the world with AI.

Says the minimum requirements of practically every LLM that can be run locally. It doesn't need to be an £10k data centre that they buy, but even basic AI based tasks running solely on the CPUs of laptops of this era will be an utterly miserable experience.

Reply 6

Dunnig Kruger

For LLM forget about running it on a laptop. Even a brand new 2025 laptop. Much better to run LLM on a dedicated server. EG the uni's server(s). Or a desktop PC that's been built specifically for LLM.

With the option to SSH to whatever server(s) from a laptop.

Much better why? Total cost. Haribo22 isn't made of money.
No degree course in the UK will expect their students to spend £thousands on computer hardware.