Question Laptop or something else for cyber security student?

[Loonmario]

My niece is going to college and will major in cyber security and I'm not sure what kind of mobile device would be best for her, I got $600 to work with to get her something. I myself went to college for Information Security 10 years ago and I used a laptop and I installed virtual machines, a Cisco networking simulator, and all sorts of programs in Windows 7. It was heavy though and carrying my books and this laptop was back breaking. I've been disabled and been out of the loop for a long while. I haven't used any of these Surface tablet/laptop devices and was wondering what I should I buy her, a traditional laptop or one of those things. She's still taking the basics so she doesn't know what to get either. Any advice?

When I was using virtual machines I had 8GB of ram and a 512GB hard drive. It was enough to run what I wanted but I don't know how it is nowadays. With only $600 I will be limited to getting something with 8GB of ram but will need a laptop that isn't a pain to access the memory slots for future upgrades.

 

[Muadib]

You should wait until shes in school. My nephew is also starting school next month, and his school had discounts on Apple Macbooks. Even with the discounts, it was way over your budget.

 

[Loonmario]

I've decided on a Lenovo Thinkpad E595 configured with Ryzen 5 3600u, 2x8gb ram with a 256gb NVMe SSD and 1tb 5400rpm storage drive for $970 with discounts. The build and ship time is 3 weeks which is a long time but should get here before the semester starts on Aug 26th. I couldn't really wait until she started school because she's got to get her classwork done from the get go.

 

[Muadib]

Hopefully the Thinkpad will serve her well. Good luck!