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Laptop for my daughter. Help her decide.

MentalIlness

MentalIlness

Platinum Member
Next week my daughter is purchasing a laptop for school. She will be starting college actually. Anyway, she wants a laptop. What would be good for her ?

It will be used for pretty much anything except for things like encoding. She'll probably want to game somewhat on it as well. And the longer the battery life, the better. The weight of the unit shouldnt be a problem. And would like a decent resolution as well.

I pretty much know nothing about laptops, ive always been a desktop guy so I dont know whats even out there and whats what really.

Any ideas of what would be good for her ?
 
If she just wants something for typing, may I recommend an Acer Aspire One ? I have their 722 model with 4GB of RAM. It's a C-60 CPU, an AMD dual-core. I picked it up at Target for ~$215 with tax.

It has an 11.6" screen, but still has a full 1366x768 resolution.

It has excellent battery life (5 hours), and is lightweight.
 
After reading the Lenovo thread, not sure it seems wise knowing they have a month turnaround time for warranty purposes.
 
I am somewhat anti-laptop for school. The idea sounds good at first, but taking notes via a word processor does not work very well, and unless your daughter is extremely disciplined, it will happen that she will spend time on Facebook or doing something other than listening to the lecture. Also, a lot of lecture halls are not set up for laptops, the same going for smaller classrooms. Laptops will get stolen, abused, forgotten somewhere... Plus part of her tuition is going to paying for on-campus labs.

I'd get her a nice desktop for her dorm room or wherever she'll be staying, and suggest that she adopt a rather strict policy of doing all of her homework in the on-campus labs. So when she's on campus, she's thinking about school, when she's off campus she can be worrying about her social life, and never do the two meet.

The closest to a laptop or tablet I would go, is something like a Kindle DX for ebook versions of textbooks.

Whether you're helping foot the bill or not for her education, the last thing you want these days is to have her needing to retake a class or anything else. That adds up to hundreds of dollars a credit, and it's only getting more expensive.

Anyway, that's my little soapbox speech. Feel free to take it for whatever it is (or isn't) worth to you.
 
Yeah students need laptops about as much as they need $26 million dorm buildings. It is ridiculous. But if you must get one, look for cpu keyword i5-3210m. Type that into slickdeals and you will see a killer student deal.
 
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Will be searching ^ as soon as I post this post.

I have just read that Trinity has better battery life ? What is the actual difference between say a Trinity/i53210m ?
 
What type of games and what kind of budget?

Blind recs: Lenovo x230 and x1 carbon, Zenbook Prime (all ultraportable with good screens and crappy graphics but will do fine if we talking Facebook games and portal).

If ypu want a gaming laptop that isnt some hulking motha Trinity is only way to go. Sounds like amd would be better for her of the intensive stuff is gpu oriented.

Middle ground might be a "sleekbook" or amd powered ultrabook. Seen 15.6 hp one amd 13 inch sammy. Would get weak specs but should out game intel and get better battery and build quality.

Would post linka but is on phone 😛
 
Not to say your daughter is frail, but my suggestion is to get her a light weight laptop. 15" notebooks have the larger screen but they're also much heavier. My productivity didn't go down much when I switched to a lighter 13", but the weight savings was major.
 
cl-scott said:
I am somewhat anti-laptop for school. The idea sounds good at first, but taking notes via a word processor does not work very well, and unless your daughter is extremely disciplined, it will happen that she will spend time on Facebook or doing something other than listening to the lecture. Also, a lot of lecture halls are not set up for laptops, the same going for smaller classrooms. Laptops will get stolen, abused, forgotten somewhere... Plus part of her tuition is going to paying for on-campus labs.

I'd get her a nice desktop for her dorm room or wherever she'll be staying, and suggest that she adopt a rather strict policy of doing all of her homework in the on-campus labs. So when she's on campus, she's thinking about school, when she's off campus she can be worrying about her social life, and never do the two meet.

The closest to a laptop or tablet I would go, is something like a Kindle DX for ebook versions of textbooks.

Whether you're helping foot the bill or not for her education, the last thing you want these days is to have her needing to retake a class or anything else. That adds up to hundreds of dollars a credit, and it's only getting more expensive.

Anyway, that's my little soapbox speech. Feel free to take it for whatever it is (or isn't) worth to you.
Click to expand...

sm625 said:
Yeah students need laptops about as much as they need $26 million dorm buildings. It is ridiculous. But if you must get one, look for cpu keyword i5-3210m. Type that into slickdeals and you will see a killer student deal.
Click to expand...

What?! Have you guys been in college recently? You are setting her up to fail. As someone who has been in college recently (undergrad and medschool over the last 8 years) I will assure you that a laptop is absolutely mandatory. My younger bro himself is wrapping up his college careers and there are entire classes he takes where you must buy an ebook from which all notes and homework will come from. Lectures these days are powerpoint, notes are downloadable PDFs, homework is uploaded. When you study in groups, you have 3 or 4 laptops up and running. Paper is a historic relic in this day and age. Get a laptop, keep it close, and use it for work are the rules of college. She needs 1 absolutely.

Also not sure about the lenovo. Nothing about build quality, but you're buying a laptop for a 17 year old girl here. Buy her something she will actually use. No offense, but buy her one of the black non descript bricks that give a lot of the anandtech crowd hard ons and watch it end up stored in a closet. Buy her a laptop she likes and she'll use it. 600 is bit tight, but I think you absolutely have to get her an ultrabook or an HP envy or macbook or something alongst those lines.
 
Sunburn74 said:
What?! Have you guys been in college recently? You are setting her up to fail. As someone who has been in college recently (undergrad and medschool over the last 8 years) I will assure you that a laptop is absolutely mandatory. My younger bro himself is wrapping up his college careers and there are entire classes he takes where you must buy an ebook from which all notes and homework will come from. Lectures these days are powerpoint, notes are downloadable PDFs, homework is uploaded. When you study in groups, you have 3 or 4 laptops up and running. Paper is a historic relic in this day and age. Get a laptop, keep it close, and use it for work are the rules of college. She needs 1 absolutely.

Also not sure about the lenovo. Nothing about build quality, but you're buying a laptop for a 17 year old girl here. Buy her something she will actually use. No offense, but buy her one of the black non descript bricks that give a lot of the anandtech crowd hard ons and watch it end up stored in a closet. Buy her a laptop she likes and she'll use it. 600 is bit tight, but I think you absolutely have to get her an ultrabook or an HP envy or macbook or something alongst those lines.
Click to expand...

As a current college student, this is exactly right. The question today is more a laptop portable enough or are you adventurous enough to go tablet only.
 
Sunburn74 said:
What?! Have you guys been in college recently? You are setting her up to fail. As someone who has been in college recently (undergrad and medschool over the last 8 years) I will assure you that a laptop is absolutely mandatory. My younger bro himself is wrapping up his college careers and there are entire classes he takes where you must buy an ebook from which all notes and homework will come from. Lectures these days are powerpoint, notes are downloadable PDFs, homework is uploaded. When you study in groups, you have 3 or 4 laptops up and running. Paper is a historic relic in this day and age. Get a laptop, keep it close, and use it for work are the rules of college. She needs 1 absolutely.

Also not sure about the lenovo. Nothing about build quality, but you're buying a laptop for a 17 year old girl here. Buy her something she will actually use. No offense, but buy her one of the black non descript bricks that give a lot of the anandtech crowd hard ons and watch it end up stored in a closet. Buy her a laptop she likes and she'll use it. 600 is bit tight, but I think you absolutely have to get her an ultrabook or an HP envy or macbook or something alongst those lines.
Click to expand...

Lol yeah I was thinking the same thing. Laptops are mandatory for college. I can't imagine going through college without one.
 
What can you do with a $600 laptop that you cannot do better with a $400 desktop and a $200 tablet?
 
sm625 said:
What can you do with a $600 laptop that you cannot do better with a $400 desktop and a $200 tablet?
Click to expand...

Do the desktop tasks in class. Typing notes on a $500 tablet is bad enough but something like the Nexus 7 is just a no go (even if you include a wireless keyboard that works with it in the $400 desktop the office applications aren't up to snuff).
 
My hunt still continues.

Could anyone possibly recommend a few models exactly ? Cause truth be told, im clueless about laptops. So in a laptop with "mild" gaming, is it better to have a better CPU ? Or a OK CPU with a better GPU ?
 
As someone who recently finished putting 3 kids through college, a laptop is a must have. Buy the best quality that you can currently afford! In doing so it will last the 4+ years through college. I sent my first kid to college with a desktop and a laptop, 6 months in she didn't touch the desktop. Everything she did was on her laptop.

The next two went to school with just a laptop and they were fine with what they had.
 
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