Student Shopper

[cavendern]

I am a first year computer science student looking for advice on a good starter laptop for school. I will be focusing on programming, and it has become important or me to buy a machine quickly as all classes have been moved to online. Any advice on which brands or certain necessary functionalities will be greatly appreciated!

 

[Commodus]

First: screen size will be important for you. I would go with at least a 15-inch system since you're going to need a lot of visual real estate and won't be heading to the classroom anyway.

You'll also want a fairly substantial processor and memory. It doesn't have to be some eight-core gaming CPU of doom, but I'd avoid the very low-power parts. I would spring for a system with at least 16GB of memory, although you don't have to use much more than that.

Storage is a tougher call. It depends on your needs. If you're just going to run the necessary apps and not much else, you might get away with 256GB... I'd prefer 512GB or more myself.

You don't have to worry about the GPU unless you're planning to game or somehow are completing programming tasks that benefit from a GPU.

One thing to consider: get a warranty that promises a fast turnaround for repairs through as many years of your degree as possible. This is your main computer, and you don't want to be out of commission for a couple of weeks because your system is in the shop for repairs. Ideally it'd be next-day on site or something similar.

If it were me and I needed a Windows machine, I'd probably get a Dell XPS 15. If it was platform-independent, I'd get a 16-inch MacBook Pro (utter overkill, but my preference).

 

[Commodus]

Great, I have a similar problem. My laptop is about 10 years old and the SSD broke there. I think if I repair it, something else will break and it is better to buy a new one ...

You're more or less right... if your laptop is a decade old, whatever upgrades you can do probably won't be worthwhile.

What's your budget? What screen size do you prefer? What kind of apps do you intend to run? Are you open to using a Mac, or do you have to use Windows?