Durham Uni - Laptops/Microsoft365

cgb2006

Hi! Hoping some Durham students can help. Going to Durham to study Law in September and am trying to decide which laptop/digital note taking device to get (taking into account costs and other pros/cons).

I was wondering whether all Durham students are provided with Microsoft 365 subscription?

And can people recommend the best laptops? I am more of a handwritten notes person, but I don’t think I’ll be able to keep that up at uni lol. Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you :smile:

Reply 1

Anonymous #1

Can confirm all Durham students are provided with Microsoft 365.

Whilst I’m not a law student nor an expert on laptops, I’ve had my Lenovo Ideapad Chromebook for two years now and I’ve found that for a relatively inexpensive laptop it is amazingly durable and fast, even with a great deal of tabs open when writing summative essays. Only cons are that you can only access Microsoft apps on the web, and that it can sometimes be a little tricky signing in to new WiFi spots, but this isn’t too much of a bother.

Reply 2

DurhamRep Lesath

Official Rep

Original post

by cgb2006

Hi! Hoping some Durham students can help. Going to Durham to study Law in September and am trying to decide which laptop/digital note taking device to get (taking into account costs and other pros/cons).
I was wondering whether all Durham students are provided with Microsoft 365 subscription?
And can people recommend the best laptops? I am more of a handwritten notes person, but I don’t think I’ll be able to keep that up at uni lol. Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you :smile:

Hello!

Well done on getting into Law and good on you for getting prepared now for the next year!
I can confirm that the university does provide a free Microsoft 365 subscriptions (which means free Microsoft Office) alongside a whole suite of other apps for you to use. Generally, once you join your course in university, you will not have to pay for any academic apps at all. I would wait until you full enrol in your course to buy any apps.

As for recommendations, based on the work I've seen my law student friends complete, I would recommend choosing a laptop that has a really good, ideally quiet keyboard (for the excessive typing you will be doing) and one that is comfortable for your eyes (because of the amount of reading you will be doing) as well. An added plus would be one which has a long battery life but I find that Durham usually has enough charging spots so this isn't a biggie. As for additional features like a touch screen or a stylus, I personally would say avoid it as it isn't necessary for your course (though since you prefer handwritten notes this may be a good option for you to transition into digital notes.) I would also recommend you get a lot of storage as you will have a lot of notes to store (though you can also use OneDrive to store these if this isn't available) but not necessarily a lot of processing power as you probably won't be doing much more than word processing. I would advise you however that that if you are buying an iPad/tablet, it is important that you own a functional laptop first because a lot of university work is quite cumbersome to complete on tablets so it's sometimes best to avoid the headache and just get a new laptop instead!

Hope this helps!
– Lesath (DU Rep.)