| Forum Home | ||||
| PC World Chat | ||||
| Thread ID: 121805 | 2011-11-14 10:48:00 | What Laptop For A New Student? | Winston001 (3612) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1243555 | 2011-11-14 10:48:00 | I know we have plenty of threads on "Which Laptop" but technology seems to change monthly so forgive me if I add to the pile. My daughter goes to Otago University next year with my blessings. I'm proud of her. She wanted an Apple Mac and frankly, with her grades etc she could have one despite my horror. Anyway she's conceded a PC will do exactly what she wants. My daughter is going to become a teacher. Like her friends she has no interest in the technical attributes of a laptop, she wants Facebook, Youtube, email, Word etc. So I'm thinking an Asus or Toshiba. What do you suggest up to about $1000? |
Winston001 (3612) | ||
| 1243556 | 2011-11-14 11:11:00 | perhaps a good netbook? My sister got a pretty zippy little number for around 750, and office is available to students for 100 bucks for a full license through the Student Steal deal. In terms of laptops, generally at the 900-1000 dollar mark you get stuff that's fine for a little bit but tends to crap out or get bogged down really quickly. I managed to get mine for around 1200, down from around 1400 I believe, at the start of last year and it's lasted me well, esp since I put an extra 2gb ram in it. I've seen people here get some insane ones for a little bit more than 1000 too, if you can just push that bit more you can break the barrier between expensive paperweight and decent entry / mid level machine, there was one Asus in particular from PB tech recently that was a real stunner for around $1150/1200. |
8ftmetalhaed (14526) | ||
| 1243557 | 2011-11-14 19:28:00 | I'd suggest around the $1200 mark (you can get nice Asus's around that price). | icow (15313) | ||
| 1243558 | 2011-11-14 21:21:00 | Oh, get her the Apple. Just like picking up a cat by the tail, it teaches a nipper something they cannot learn any other way. ;) (Unless you are fond of her, in which case drop the apple, and go easy with the cat.) |
R2x1 (4628) | ||
| 1243559 | 2011-11-15 00:16:00 | You can get her a Apple if you want. A reasonable amount of students have them ... incl MacBook Pro's. Fewer have AirBooks though. For a PC laptop. Anything will do IMO. I know some students who have with Celeron CPUs, for what she does that's fine. She would probably connect to the university's wireless network anyway. Not all universities allow you to print via wireless so they may need to use a campus desktop PC or some of the printing kiosks (which do not have internet access) to print. Yeah you can get the student version of MS Office that includes MS Access as well as Publisher and Outlook for under $99 - requires download and a tertiary education email address to register. There is no retail package nor a CD shipped to you although you can request and it's a further cost. You can get Netbooks but I don't recommend it. Too small. But quite some students have them too. That includes a restricted version of MS Office (part of MS Windows 7 Starter). Just a note that some students complain about laptops that they are heavy. It does weigh a fair bit if you are going to carry it the whole day everyday and it's quite a proportion or most of the weight for what a student carries out each day. Some female students have their personal bag and a laptop bag for eg. |
Nomad (952) | ||
| 1243560 | 2011-11-15 04:17:00 | Good point about the weight Nomad but I guess it goes with the territory. Rx1 - we loves our cats, so they get treated gently. :D I'll look around the $1200 mark and PB Tech have a shop in Dunedin. I need to get on with this, her birthday in 10 days. |
Winston001 (3612) | ||
| 1243561 | 2011-11-15 08:37:00 | Winston001, you may not have noticed, but the cat has never been the lacerated party in this procedure ;) | R2x1 (4628) | ||
| 1243562 | 2011-11-15 09:56:00 | Oookkkaayyy...now that I've searched, I'm very confused mainly because I'm out of touch. I have no idea what a "good" processor is. Furthermore laptops et al used to come as defined models, pretty much the same at least in Asia/Pacific. Now every machine appears to require the entire alphabet to define it. There are thousands of the things. So, the fundamental approach is manufacturer quality, sufficient RAM (4GB?) and...what else? I can't see the benefit of a huge HD or a big screen. Portability is important. I can certainly now see how clever Apple are with their design and appeal. Edit: anything wrong with this Toshiba L650 (whatever that means :D) ? www.pbtech.co.nz |
Winston001 (3612) | ||
| 1243563 | 2011-11-15 10:10:00 | Toshiba i5 4Gb decent vid card looks fine to me. |
DeSade (984) | ||
| 1243564 | 2011-11-15 10:22:00 | PC laptops have gone mostly with wide screens. Mac for example hasn't. Still employing 11", 13", 15" etc .. Re: the Tosh. i5 is good enough or even a i3 me thinks. Video card shouldn't be an issue for non games. |
Nomad (952) | ||
| 1 2 3 | |||||