Best Laptop for School?

victorjohn9211

Hey guys,
So recently, I have decided that I need to replace my laptop. It's a gaming laptop (and therefore really heavy), that I bought because, at the time, I did not have a computer and wanted a graphics card. However, now this laptop has become a bit cumbersome to take around and therefore I need something more portable, but powerful. So, Suggest me some Laptops which are better.

DFTK13

If you can afford it, a MacBook Pro or air. The Unix compatibility is invaluable especially if you get into programming, and it seems to last forever, my wife has a MacBook Pro 2012 that’s running strong even after nearly 8 years. I’ve gone through nearly 3 laptops in that time span for various failure reasons. 

bigdogz

If you are still into gaming, Dell, HP and others have made some gaming laptops that do have a smaller footprint.. 
MacBooks have the Linux comparability but you pay a great deal to have the apple on the back of your laptop monitor.

Infosec_Sam

If you can afford to put some quality components into it, I really like the Dell XPS 13 series laptop. It does everything the Macbook Pro can do, but it's quite a bit cheaper. I like to prioritize build quality over specs when shopping for laptops, so the XPS 13 hits a sweet spot for me. The next time I'm ready to upgrade, that's what I'm going to go for.

Neil86

I got a MBP when I was starting back in to school. I was new to MBP's so I was all about the hype of getting one. I still have mine (2015?) and it's still flawless. They are great for sure, especially for the reasons above, but Dell and HP do make some great ones too. I got to mess with a Dell Latitude 5290 2-in-1 and HP EliteBook x360 and was really impressed. Just don't go cheap. I've done the cheapos for under $500 and what a bunch of garbage.

thomas_

I bought a $350 acer laptop on ebay.  I put a NVMe drive in it and later increased the DDR4 to 32GB.  You’d be hard pressed to find a better laptop at that price point even when you include the cost of the RAM and NVMe drive.

The drawbacks are that the graphics card isn’t that great, the processor is only an i3, it only has one PCIE 3.0 lane for the NVMe drive(but it’s still faster than the SSD I had in it), most of the case is black plastic(except for the part surrounding the keyboard), and I wish the keyboard was closer to the edge of the laptop.

Since I’m not a gamer and don’t do graphic-intensive work it works for me.  I even use VMware Workstation on it and can have quite a few machines running at the same time.  I have a desktop with 32GB of RAM and an i7, but I haven’t used it for virtualization since I’ve bought this laptop.

I think MacBook Pros are overpriced for what they offer and if you want a Unix experience down load freeBSD and run it in a VM.

LonerVamp

What is your budget? What do you plan to do on it? What OS and purpose?

Unless you travel a LOT for work and really want to play certain games, I wouldn't suggest getting a gaming system. You can get a decent used Thinkpad or something and just upgrade RAM/SSD for a really nice platform. Maybe a new keybaord if the old one is gunky.

This isn't the best place to ask, since you have no idea how much any of us geek out about laptops or hardware. If you find some good resources, feel free to let us know. I've been sort of in the wind since hardocp shut down (the forums are still there, however), but thankfully I haven't had any real hardware needs in several years.

Infosec_Sam

I'm just going to throw this link out there, in case you know what specs you're aiming for. I love using this site to shop for electronics - it's always been pretty helpful for me to visualize my options.

paul78

Just my 2 cents. If you want Linux compatibility - do not spend the extra money on a Mac just for looks.

WSL under Windows has much better compatibility since you are essentially running Linux natively. The one big downside though is raw network and filesystem access. If you can live without those 2 things, generally for most development work and studying - Windows-based laptop is a lot more affordable and flexible.

I use a gaming laptop when I want the better performance but I also have a Dell laptop for it's light-weight. Take a look at the refurbished Dell laptops from the Dell website - there are some very good deals.

Also - the concept of "best" is highly subjective. What will you be doing with it? And what's your budget?

thomas_

paul78 said:

WSL under Windows has much better compatibility since you are essentially running Linux natively. The one big downside though is raw network and filesystem access.

I’m far from an expert, but powershell combined with .net gives you pretty good access to those two things.

paul78

thomas_ said:

paul78 said:

WSL under Windows has much better compatibility since you are essentially running Linux natively. The one big downside though is raw network and filesystem access.

I’m far from an expert, but powershell combined with .net gives you pretty good access to those two things.

I was responding to the comment that Macs offer better compatibility with Linux environments. My comment is that WSL allows Linux apps to run natively in Windows. The downside in running the Windows Subsystem for Linux is that you cannot run certain Linux apps natively that access certain hardware directly. For example, you cannot run nmap. And files on the Windows filesystem are treated as mountpoints in /mnt.

Are you suggesting running powershell and .NET in Linux? I don't come across many people that are actually using powershell in Linux.

thomas_

@paul78 - It looks like I didn’t read closely enough.  That makes sense.

JDMurray

There are some really powerful Chromebooks (ChromeOS aka Linux Inside) out now if you don't mind the $1K+ price range. All my non-stationary laptops are Chromebooks.

Rajesh_Nous

Not sure whether you've made any conclusion but if you need to check user reviews on a particular product if you've finalized then just check & compare at Product Hunt – The best new products in tech.

bigdogz

@JDMurray
What do you like best and worst on your Chromebooks?
I was thinking of getting one but I was not sure.

Barbarads

Dell XPS 13, 13.3-inch Full HD display. It is equipped with an eighth-generation Intel processor, Core i5 – i7 CPU, and Intel UHD Graphics 620 graphics card is very suitable for playing games.

Dogstail

bigdogz said:

@JDMurray
I was thinking of getting one but I was not sure.

Why not?My brother already has one.

bigdogz

I would have to play with it to see if I like it.

beckycraig

I am not sure if this thread is still active but it is 2020 already and people loitering around for updated information might find the thread outdated. So, here are a few updated suggestions.

These days SSDs are more standard, and choosing SSD is just common sense. 16RAM is the bare minimum in my opinion. Better DDR4 than DDR3. Processors these days are more capable and faster. You should worry less about the processor and focus more on RAM and SSD. I hope that helps!