Laptop for college.

obo

obo

New Member
Hey, so I'm purchasing a laptop for college and I would like to know if any of you have opinions on which brands of laptops are good.

I'm going to be an electrical engineer so I need a computer with 8gb+ of ram and i7 sandy bridge processing.
Basically I need a really high performance laptop that is well built.
AND IT MUST BE A PC WITH WINDOWS 7, I WILL NOT BUY A MACBOOK PRO. I have my reasons for this and can not be persuaded otherwhys. (yes I know about bootcamp, no it's not going to happen)

Currently I've been looking at the Lenovo Thinktop w520. I can get a suped up one for about 1500$ through special pricing and the laptop usually runs about $2000+


If you have an opinion, let me know these things:

What kind of laptop do you use?

What are the specs of your laptop?

How much did you buy it for?

What is your major/what do you use the laptop for?

Thanks in advance for your input!
 
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PS3andCOD

Contributor
Yeah, whatever you do don't get a mac. They overprice it so much because of their stupid software... The hardware generally sucks. Little known fact, you can actually instal pirated mac OS on a PC, they don't sell the software so pirating is the only way... I've never tried it, but I hear it works properly. Are you sure the sandy bridge is available in laptops? I thought it was desktop only for some reason...
 
obo

obo

New Member
PS3andCOD said:
Yeah, whatever you do don't get a mac. They overprice it so much because of their stupid software... The hardware generally sucks. Little known fact, you can actually instal pirated mac OS on a PC, they don't sell the software so pirating is the only way... I've never tried it, but I hear it works properly. Are you sure the sandy bridge is available in laptops? I thought it was desktop only for some reason...
Click to expand...
I'm positive that sandy bridge is in laptops. Not all laptops, but you can get it if you're willing to pay for it.
 
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Remmnever

Member
Darn I was going to say get a Mac. I bought a top of the line Asus gaming laptop a couple years ago. Not even a year later its value had dropped from $1,500 to $700. I told myself I would never buy an expensive laptop again.

I ended up buying a mid 2010 Macbook pro 13" and I love it. It's almost a year old now and the value hasn't dropped at all, even though there are new 2011 models.

What I hate about windows pcs is how fast they start slowing down. I'm not one to install a bunch of crap on my computer but every windows pc/laptop I have ever owned has slowed down over time. My macbook is still as speedy as the day I got it. I can't imagine how fast the new 2011 17" macbook pros are. You can even get them with the solid state hard drives so they run even faster.

Anyway I would recommend going to an Apple store and trying out their laptops before you turn them down. I was the same way a few years ago. I hated apple and always chose Microsoft over them. Now I have a macbook pro, ipad, iphone, ipod touch, etc and I love them all.
 
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NYjetsNY1

Active Member
Remmnever said:
Darn I was going to say get a Mac. I bought a top of the line Asus gaming laptop a couple years ago. Not even a year later its value had dropped from $1,500 to $700. I told myself I would never buy an expensive laptop again.

I ended up buying a mid 2010 Macbook pro 13" and I love it. It's almost a year old now and the value hasn't dropped at all, even though there are new 2011 models.

What I hate about windows pcs is how fast they start slowing down. I'm not one to install a bunch of crap on my computer but every windows pc/laptop I have ever owned has slowed down over time. My macbook is still as speedy as the day I got it. I can't imagine how fast the new 2011 17" macbook pros are. You can even get them with the solid state hard drives so they run even faster.

Anyway I would recommend going to an Apple store and trying out their laptops before you turn them down. I was the same way a few years ago. I hated apple and always chose Microsoft over them. Now I have a macbook pro, ipad, iphone, ipod touch, etc and I love them all.
Click to expand...

Oh my god this sounds like my life.

Windows laptop bought for a lot of money, is now worth next to nothing.

Installed nothing, tried to avoid viruses - nothing helped it kept getting slower and slower.

My macbook pro is still as fast as the day I got it, and has kept most of its value.
I run windows on it as well when I need to and has been great so far.

I had 2 ipod touches (2nd gen, 4th gen) but I gave them away to younger people in my family that will actually use it.

I love apple computers now, but I used to despise them! I really warmed up to macs though.

To each his own though, some people just swear by windows.
 
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PS3andCOD

Contributor
I like windows for the compatability... If you want it to go faster you can get a 60gb solid state for about $100, you load the OS and the main programs you use on it and the rest fo stuff on a normal HDD. The only reason the apple computers drop in price less is that a) there are loads of fanboys out there (not saing anyone here is, but they exist) b) They don't really change the hardware in them, unless you shell out huge amounts of money for a custum one the base model stays pretty much the same.
 
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PS3andCOD

Contributor
He's not going to want a tablet I doubt... Is it a win 7 tablet? They seem quite expensive for what tehy do to me... I personally went with a beast desktop and an older laptop as back up.
 
obo

obo

New Member
I'm don't hate macs by any means, they're decent computers, the only problem is the compatibility, even if I run windows 7 on a macbook, there are still loads of compatibility issues that arise when dealing with engineering software. I would strongly consider a macbook if it would run all of my software :/
 
HippieMagic

HippieMagic

New Member
Origin PC has some nice models. They are the original Alienware guys but the Clevo/Sager based laptops are currently the best. Lenovo Thinkpads are good for business related things but really any laptop is good for that. Honestly if I were you I would get a nice desktop and a cheap laptop because frankly the price is going to be easier on you AND you will get more power out of it. A laptop is good for portability but when you start trying to get more power you lose the portability and then when you end up lugging around a 17" laptop all day you realize a desktop and a small laptop would have been great.

PCs slow down because of registry issues, fragmentation issues, spyware, ad-ware, filling the drives up too much... you name it. You have to be smart about your usage and the PC will keep it's speed. For instance if you get a laptop and it is vital it stays fast go grab a good, reliable SSD like an intel. You might spend a fortune but it won't slow down on you.

I am not entirely sure what an electrical engineer needs to do on a computer so I can't really recommend anything. I can tell you that if you have any demanding programs that you are better off getting a desktop because "high performance" and "laptop" do not go hand in hand. You may get a fast laptop but frankly if you need power you need a desktop... there is no avoiding it.

If you aren't really running virtual machines you don't need 8+ gigs of ram. Frankly you don't need more than 6 and you will likely never break 4. More RAM does NOT mean faster PC and even on a laptop it is a VERY simple thing to add. NEVER pay a premium for something that will take you 5 minutes to do on your own. If you aren't using the available RAM you are just wasting your money on more because even in the future when you end up needing that extra RAM you are going to need a faster video card AND CPU. Laptops become outdated very quickly and you can only replace them in most cases.

4 cores... period. Don't buy 2 core anything. A lot of programs use at least 2 cores now and if you have 2 or less you will be hurting.

The fastest mobile graphics card is the GTX485m. It is about on par with a mid range desktop card. It will get you 1080p gaming for now if you are into that sort of thing. It's a decent card for a mobile one but be VERY careful of the mobile gpu numbers because the higher number is not the better card... GTX555(I think that is one) is nowhere near as fast as the 485.

Before I really bore you anymore do you know what programs you will be running?
 
Fredrow

Fredrow

Active Member
Dude I used/still use this old laptop that I bought for a $50 bucks, used..... It was slow when I got it, then I went through cleaned the **** outta it and installed a new HD into it and loaded windows 7 ultimate on it and it has being running like a champ ever since. I use it to hook my Yamaha keyboard up to it while running Fruity Loops, I have NI MultiSim & Labview on it, plus the whole Adobe CS5 master collection and it still runs like a champ....

The point I'm getting at here is, save your money for booze & women don't blow it on a super expensive laptop.... If your just using it for college type stuff then look hard at saving yourself some money....
 
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NYjetsNY1

Active Member
Fredrow said:
Dude I used/still use this old laptop that I bought for a $50 bucks, used..... It was slow when I got it, then I went through cleaned the **** outta it and installed a new HD into it and loaded windows 7 ultimate on it and it has being running like a champ ever since. I use it to hook my Yamaha keyboard up to it while running Fruity Loops, I have NI MultiSim & Labview on it, plus the whole Adobe CS5 master collection and it still runs like a champ....

The point I'm getting at here is, save your money for booze & women don't blow it on a super expensive laptop.... If your just using it for college type stuff then look hard at saving yourself some money....
Click to expand...

What are the specs on that $50 laptop? What processor / Ghz... how much RAM etc?
 
Fredrow

Fredrow

Active Member
If I remember that stuff the first time I would have dropped it on ya'll....

It's a older Compaq it has 4GB-RAM; AMD 64X2 1.60GHz processor; and then I added in a 250GB HD....


On a side note, I had not idea that **** (the place opposite from heaven) was considered a swear word; you guy's working at Viking360 should really work on that censor.....
 
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NYjetsNY1

Active Member
The word filtration system is only accessible by odingalt, and currently he is working on more important things right now. I got him to remove a few, but he doesn't have time to look through everything. I'll pass it on to him though.
 
HippieMagic

HippieMagic

New Member
I have to agree with Fredrow. For just school related things you just don't need a ton of power. Now for gaming or video encoding that is a completely different story but if you are gaming or encoding... as I said earlier... you are much better off with a cheaper and more powerful desktop. It's still up to you of course. If you want a powerful laptop look at the Clevo/Sager line. They are about as high end as they get and I would assume they will stick the gtx580m in it soon enough.
 
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PS3andCOD

Contributor
That's pretty good fro $50 Fredrow... I have a desktop with the 6-core black edition AMD (3.2 GHz/6 cores, overclockable up to around 4.5GHz), it's pretty beast. I paid 1100, with a mid range graphics card. It's come down in price a bit though, so I think you could get a high end graphics card with it for that price now. It can convert 1080p video faster than watching it speed. Or you could wait for bulldozer (AMD's new line) to come out and see what's up with them... I like AMD for being cheaper but still powerful, I don't really know how the latest intels are doing.
 
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NYjetsNY1

Active Member
Man 1100 for this! Just a kick in the face for mac users lol because for those specs 1100 is nothing, on a mac if you get half those specs it'll be over $3000 lol.
 
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