Best laptop for IT/CS/MIS college students

What's the best laptop to use for students in the tech field?

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Your basically looking for something reliable and high end. I7 good ram large hard drive. This way you should easily be able to run multiple vms etc

636-555-3226

Depends on what you're looking to do. If Linux is an option (and it always should be!) I'd recommend system76.com. Linux is, after all, the most widely used OS in the world by far.

Unfortunately, your classes will probably require you to install and use Windows software, in which case they're all pretty much the same. Get as powerful of a computer as you can afford. i7 with 16gb ram is my recommendaton. 32gb if the laptop supports it and you can afford it ($$$$). SSD is preferred. M2 storage is an upcharge you don't need to pay for. 3k/4k display isn't necessary and can save you some bucks.

escane99

What about the OS X for Mac? Is it a better choice than Linux?

UncleB

escane99 wrote: »

What's the best laptop to use for students in the tech field?

It will also depend on how you will be using the laptop - if it is being taken back and forth a lot then the chances of damage are high so I would go for a cheap but portable laptop and keep a reasonably well spec'd PC at home to work on as your main power machine. Both the laptop and last years i7 with 32Gb of memory, 256Gb SSD and secondary 4Tb data disk and dual screens are all easily affordable for the price of a low end Macbook.

If you need to show how cool you are with a flash laptop then you are going to have to spend a pretty penny. Macbooks are the posers tool of choice but are very expensive to repair. Microsoft Surfaces are IMHO cooler but more fragile, but I don't want to get into a mac vs PC debate here - safe to say cool is poor value to get the job done.

You probably want to replace the computer each year so look for stuff that has residual value for when you come to sell it. If you do plan to go for only on computer for the whole course then get the best one you can afford with insurance that includes accidental damage.

Without knowing what you are going to do with it, most of this is going to be vague anyway I'm afraid.

escane99

Well I guess I'll be doing some coding, ppt presentations, video editing, photoshopping, note taking, and a little bit of PC games (hehe). I need it to be fast with a great graphics driver. It's not about the "coolness" but more on how much I can do with it and how fast I can execute these things (you know, without the lag and all).

Danielm7

escane99 wrote: »

Well I guess I'll be doing some coding, ppt presentations, video editing, photoshopping, note taking, and a little bit of PC games (hehe). I need it to be fast with a great graphics driver. It's not about the "coolness" but more on how much I can do with it and how fast I can execute these things (you know, without the lag and all).

Get ready to pay for it then. Everything else, coding, presentations, etc, are all pretty tame. Video editing, depending on how much you're really doing can eat up a lot but if you want to play pretty recent games it's going to cost you. As UncleB mentioned, you might be a lot better off building a cheap desktop with a reasonable video card and then getting a cheap laptop you can bring to class and won't be devastated when a fan on your 3K laptop burns out and you can't even play with it on the weekends.

joshuamurphy75

It all depends on the job. I chose mine because it has an Ethernet port. Figured I might need it if I ever had to prove Internet speeds at a demarc. Didn't want any confusion about where the bottle necks are by using adapters or WiFi. I would have chosen one with a DB9 port for console cables if I found one with similar specs, but decided it wasn't worth downgrading too much.

TheProfezzor

If you can carry the weight, I have the "HP ZBook 15 G3". i7 6820HQ, 32Gb Memory and 512SSD. Quadro M2000 4Gb included. I run a lot of things in it, including VMware Workstation based VM's, Games, Rendering and other stuff. It was declared the best Autocad laptop for 2016.

If you can't carry the weight, I also have used the "HP Elitebook Folio" series. Lightweight yet powerful.

escane99

Umm let's say I don't know how to build a desktop yet so I'm just looking for a laptop. What model would I be better off using?

thomas_

You want to major in IT, CS, or MIS, but you dismiss building your own computer because you don't know how to do it?

*Scratches head*

A large part of the fields you listed involves problem solving and finding solutions to problems you or other people are experiencing. It also involves reading instruction manuals and finding out how to do something.

If you don't want a desktop that's one thing, but dismissing the desktop idea because you don't know how to build one is entirely different. Telling your boss, "I don't know how to do that, so I'm not going to do that" isn't going to go over too well.

With that being said I really liked my Sony Vail laptop. I've heard Sony spun the Vaio brand off and it's kind of its own brand now. I haven't really researched the Vaio laptops that much, but if I were in the market for a laptop that's definitely one of the laptops I would consider buying.

escane99

thomas_ wrote: »

You want to major in IT, CS, or MIS, but you dismiss building your own computer because you don't know how to do it?

*Scratches head*

A large part of the fields you listed involves problem solving and finding solutions to problems you or other people are experiencing. It also involves reading instruction manuals and finding out how to do something.

If you don't want a desktop that's one thing, but dismissing the desktop idea because you don't know how to build one is entirely different. Telling your boss, "I don't know how to do that, so I'm not going to do that" isn't going to go over too well.

With that being said I really liked my Sony Vail laptop. I've heard Sony spun the Vaio brand off and it's kind of its own brand now. I haven't really researched the Vaio laptops that much, but if I were in the market for a laptop that's definitely one of the laptops I would consider buying.

I'm definitely not dismissing the idea of building my own desktop (in fact, I would love to learn how!) but I can't at the moment since I was only given the option to buy a laptop and not build a desktop (which, again, I am open to learn about). The people who will be providing me with financial support only agreed to buy me one laptop to use for the whole duration of my college life and beyond until I can pay for my own.

(And come on, if they're willing to buy me a laptop that I'll be using until I get enough money to buy another one, I might as well use it to my advantage)

Anyways, thanks for the recommendation. I'll be sure to research it.

wd40

How much money will they give you to buy the laptop?, you can get a laptop for 300$ or 3000$, without knowing the budget it would be difficult to give recommendations.

escane99

wd40 wrote: »

How much money will they give you to buy the laptop?, you can get a laptop for 300$ or 3000$, without knowing the budget it would be difficult to give recommendations.

Around $1,200 - $1,400

shimasensei

escane99 wrote: »

What about the OS X for Mac? Is it a better choice than Linux?

I currently use my 15" Retina MacBook Pro, running OSX and Win10 BootCamp.

kurosaki00

escane99 wrote: »

Around $1,200 - $1,400

With that budget you can get a medium range gaming computer. For IT/CS, you can get good stuff for much less. Unless you want a mac.
Instead of budget, research quality. 1k is more than enough for an IT/CS laptop.

There are great IDEs on all type of OSs (linux/win/mac).

MacGuffin

escane99 wrote: »

What about the OS X for Mac? Is it a better choice than Linux?

I think so. But if you go with MacOS you can still have Linux. Download the free VirtualBox, or spend a few more bucks and get Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion, and install your favorite Linux distribution. I've tried VirtualBox and VMWare and I can say that VMWare is worth the money.

If you don't mind rebooting to switch operating systems you can use the Boot Camp utility to install Linux. Linux will run faster, gets you more RAM (since you are running just a single OS now), but comes with the cost of potential hardware compatibility problems since there's no VM abstraction layer to hide the hardware behind a compatibility layer.

Apple does make good hardware, and nothing prevents you from running Linux exclusively. Just install it like you would with any other laptop, blowing away MacOS. This may or not be a trivial task depending on the specific hardware and Linux distribution you choose. Do your research before you try Linux exclusively, or with Boot Camp, to verify compatibility.

I've seen people do crazier stuff to get the most out of running MacOS and another operating system on Apple hardware. For example, ESXi will run on a MacBook Pro but this is certainly not recommended. If you get an Apple and want to run Linux then install it alone, dual boot with Boot Camp, or use a VM on MacOS. If you use a hypervisor on an Apple laptop then do so knowing that this is not supported by Apple or any hypervisor developer.

Running a hypervisor on an Apple desktop computer is a different matter though, and I would even recommend it so long as you are aware of its limitations and benefits.

dmoore44

I use a mid-2013 13" MBP for my graduate studies, and it's proven to be more than up to the task of doing coursework for the following courses:
- Operating Systems (had to run multiple Linux VMs)
- Object Oriented Programming (had to write programs in Java, so I experimented with several IDEs like IntelliJ Idea and Eclipse)
- Network & Internet Security (had to run several security tools to capture and analyze network layer information)
- Statistics for IT Managers (had to use a few statistical modeling programs like Minitab and Mathematica)
- Economic Analysis (lots of Excel use)
- Many other courses that had heavy writing components (Mendeley desktop was a life saver)

That being said, I could have also used my desktop to do much of that... But, as has been mentioned before, software dictated my choice as I have a large collection of software for MacOS (an older version of Adobe CS, amongst others), and have done a bit of development for iOS (which necessitates XCode) and MacOS (which has a lot of OS specific peculiarities). Also, I tend to like using the worlds most successful commercially available Unix

MacGuffin

escane99 wrote: »

Around $1,200 - $1,400

Is that the budget for just the laptop or does it include the software and peripherals? I don't really need an answer but it is something you will have to consider.

I was in a similar situation a few years ago. The Veterans Administration was paying for my education but I needed a computer too. They said they'd buy a computer but I made sure I included in the price all the peripherals and software I thought I'd need. Think about what you want this computer to do and make sure you have the budget for it. If the people financing the computer will not buy such things then you'll have to come up with them on your own.

You mentioned PowerPoint presentations. Will the school provide this? Does the cost of this come out of your computer budget? What facilities will you have in your presentations? Presumably there will be a video projector but if the connection is VGA and your computer has DisplayPort then you'll need to have an adapter.

Does the school provide Wi-Fi or will you be expected to plug into ethernet? Where I go to school there is Wi-Fi but in many classrooms there are ethernet ports on the desks since the Wi-Fi can be easily overwhelmed with so many students all on at the same time. Plan for any other connectivity, such as are you going to be needing a serial port for programming an embedded computer. If you are in a Cisco course, or something like it, then you might want a serial port adapter and cable (I've seen all in one things now, a 2 meter cable with USB-A on one end and RJ-45 serial on the other, an adapter for DB-9 is in the kit). A single Ethernet might not be enough if you need to be a "man in the middle" or are doing some virtual machine stuff where the VM needs a "real" ethernet port.

You mentioned gaming. That's not something the powers-that-be are likely to pay for. If you are doing teleconferencing though then you'll want a set of headphones. They'll work for gaming too.

I just look at the peripherals around me and I see a lot of things I picked up for my laptop at some point. One thing is an optical drive, will software or course material come on a disk? Also handy to copy large files for backups or to hand in to the instructor. A small nearly disposable USB drive or three might be handy if you hand in files on them and you don't know that you'll get it back. I see a keyboard and mouse (a keyboard is probably redundant but I mouse instead of just the trackpad is nice and inexpensive).

How long can this laptop run? How long will it need to run? If the run time is too short then get an additional battery. This might mean you need an extra battery.

Keep this in mind while shopping