Help! Need a laptop/desktop for college

[vil_iam1]

Hi guys!

So I've got some money to get a computer that can deal with my computing needs (I will be doing a Bachelor of Computer Science), however, I need to know what I should do, and if other college students could give me some tips on what they did.

I want to know what would be a good laptop for college computer science. I already have a low end but extremely light 10" laptop (ASUS X102BA), would this be good enough for computer science? The portability is good but performance is pretty terrible. It takes ages to load a website (compared to my iPad which takes like 1-2 seconds) but it types and does stuff. I have dual booted this device with Ubuntu so I've been trying to get used to this in order to help with my programming skills in the long run. I will need to run software such as 'Greenfoot' and 'R' for statistics which I'm unsure if I'll be able to run. Which is why I'm not sure if it would be better the get a good laptop, desktop, or neither and just keep my laptop.

I'm not much of a gamer so that doesn't matter much to me. I only really play tf2 and cs:go and if you find a laptop that can run those at mid-high settings 60 fps then I'd be very happy of course my priorities don't lie in gaming though.

I was considering the Gigabyte P34G V2 but I think its a bit of overkill with the GPU (I don't really need to be able to play Crysis 3, considering I only own 2 games xD) especially with its lackluster battery life and the fact that its not even fast once the power plug is pulled. I don't really want to go Macbook Air because its crappy specs kinda scare me a bit and I'm not all that familiar with OS X, but if your experience with it was FREAKING AWESOME compared to other laptops of the same price point then please feel free to share. If I were to get a new laptop I'd need the SSD/mSATA, I refuse to work with HDDs if I'm going to pay money for a laptop, preferably an i7 processor, a medium end GPU, 8-16gb RAM, 13-15" @ 1080p (I don't really need higher resolutions in my opinion but feel free to suggest if it is more), good battery life and fairly light for ease of use when around campus. Budget is $1600AUD (Australian Dollar because I'm Australian [duhh] ).

I could build my own desktop but I doubt that would be necesary if the programs I'll be needing are fairly light, but just enough that my laptop probably can't handle it and I'm forced to sit in the same spot. I'm in university now so portability is essential but please also leave your thoughts on this as well.

I've looked at the Asus Zenbook as well and that looks like a good choice but I'm not sure if it actually is any good.

So do you guys have any advice? Anything that you college students/people in computer science that could recommend for me? Thanks! Sorry for the long essay btw.

 

[Darkbreeze]

God no, that thing's a dog. Seriously, no offense, but a 1ghz dual core unit is unlikely to in any way be sufficient as a computer science tool in any meaningful way. You'll be two days behind every other student simply due to waiting. Heh, maybe not that bad, but close.

Before making a recommendation, is there any reason you cannot order through the Newegg or Amazon Australian websites? I know most people kinda go "what do you mean, of course I can!" but I've had a lot of Aussie and NZ members absolutely refuse to not use a local vendor or on a few occasions were in provinces or something where there would be some kind of extra duties that made it senseless when added to the price of the hardware.

 

[Alabalcho]

Your laptop will be good for taking notes or writing essays, it will be of no use for your CS program - it is made to be portable and light, not powerfull.

Keep your laptop for as long as it is alive, and get a desktop with i5/i7 processor, at least 8gb of RAM, whatever SSD/HDD you like, and the best monitor you can afford (seriosly - you're going to stare a lot into it) - at least 1920x1080, at this resolution 24" is the minumum size..

Plan to get another laptop couple of years into your college - you will probably need another computer when you come into networking classess.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Nah, you're likely to run into a lack of system requirements for some aspects of the scholastic program and will undoubtedly be unhappy having to wait around for web pages to load if you have to do any research or connect to a possibly required educational network. You're going to NEED something more capable than what that unit is capable of at some point, if not immediately. A 1ghz dual core isn't good for much more than basic browsing and office applications. Since you've already indicated it can't keep up with browsing functions, you're likely to have issues in classes.

 

[vil_iam1]

Thank you both for your responses! Yes I know, the laptop is terrible xD and now that I have an iPad, I could probably just get a good keyboard for it, sell the laptop to help invest in a better one or a desktop. My sister offered to buy it simply for essays, which is good but i think id feel slightly guilty if I sold something with such bad performance, but I guess its portable so :/ I found a used Metabox Prime W230SS for a very good discount in Australia, but again it might be a bit of overkill.

Yes I probably could get it from newegg or amazon however they tend to be slightly expensive than the ones in Australia, and I've personally never bought anything from either of them. Cheaper ones in Australia tend to be kongcomputers, affordable laptops australia, or pretty much most of them that end in '.com.au'. Or even eBay. The main problems I have with Amazon is the incorrect currency conversion, and with both of them is that a lot of the times things arent being shipped to Australia.

I would love to get a powerful desktop, however, I'll always be haunted by the fact that I'm strapped to my desk if I ever need to use it. But, yeah theres the fact that desktops have superior cooling, cheaper, more powerful. But portability, thats something thats hard to give up. I will full heartedly consider it tho. Could be better for me, it would force me to plan everything in advance instead of typing stuff up at the last second. The other problem is taking out the time to find all the parts for it but eh, oh well guess I got time for a new desktop xD

 

[Darkbreeze]

So, I spent a good deal of time looking around at AU websites, and as always when dealing with the higher prices there it can be discouraging, however, from all the looking I did this was the unit that struck me as having the best selection of features versus price. It has everything you could need and is well below your budget of 1600AUD.

It's got an i7, GTX 840M discreet GPU, wireless AC and while it doesn't have an SSD, you can easily add one for WAY less than what I've seen any of the models that come with one would cost you. It would take about two hours to do a clean install of the OS to the SSD using the Windows 8.1 install media creator on their website which works with any unit that has a licensed OS and allows you to download and create either DVD or USB installation media and is probably better than an installation that comes with all the factory supplied bloatware anyhow.

Plus, you would then have an additional 750GB HDD for additional storage. You could easily add it to the notebook optical bay using an optical drive bay carriage adapter or get a cheap usb enclosure to use it externally.

Unit is here: http://www.mwave.com.au/product/hp-pavilion-15p055tx-j3z09pa-156-core-i7-4gb-750gb-840m-win-81-ab59434

SSD here: http://www.mwave.com.au/product/samsung-850-evo-250gb-25-sata-iii-ssd-mz75e250-ab59172


With the i7 and GTX 840 you can game those titles, and most other titles, at medium to high settings no problem. Very demanding titles will take a hit on either frame rates or settings, but you're not looking for a serious gaming unit anyhow. The 250GB 850 EVO is one of the fastest SATA storage drives on the planet aside from pretty much everything except the 850 Pro. This would do everything you need, and then some, for a fair amount under your budget of 1600AUD. Total would be around 1034.00AUD plus whatever taxes and such you pay there.


Microsoft windows 8 and 8.1 installation media creation:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media