hackalive Posted March 18, 2010 Share Posted March 18, 2010 I have a mates son going to Univeristy in AUstralia soon to do a double degree in Computer Science and Computer Systems Engineering, what is the best notebook for this kind of couse and for a programmer, a Mac book Pro? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
salathe Posted March 18, 2010 Share Posted March 18, 2010 How about letting him choose? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zq29 Posted March 18, 2010 Share Posted March 18, 2010 I find it annoying writing code on one of my Macs as there isn't a # key, and I can never remember what the key-combo is to enter one. I suppose you could get used to this though if you use one every day. If it were me, I'd pick up a name brand laptop and install a Linux distro on it - There's a lot more to play and tinker with, especially for someone interested in taking those kind of courses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hackalive Posted March 18, 2010 Author Share Posted March 18, 2010 salathe I was looking more for brand reccomendations like Asus which I was thinking, as I am going to buy it for him Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinM1 Posted March 18, 2010 Share Posted March 18, 2010 salathe I was looking more for brand reccomendations like Asus which I was thinking, as I am going to buy it for him Here's what I'd do: 1. Let the kid spec out what he wants - processor, HDD, GPU, etc. Make sure the kid bases these specs based on what he knows about the courses he'll likely take. 2. Go to various vendor sites (Asus, Dell, Toshiba, etc.) and price out a notebook with those specs. 3. Once you have a few options in a price range that's comfortable for you, visit review sites for reviews on those specific models. 4. Buy the one with the best aggregate reviews. There's no bulletproof brand out there. Instead, do your due diligence to ensure you get a good investment for your money. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
salathe Posted March 18, 2010 Share Posted March 18, 2010 A few (not an exhaustive list) of practical things: Enough RAM for running multiple virtual environments at the same time Plenty of space for multiple OSes (disk images, too), a tonne of HD movies, music and a stack of porn Long battery life (for wandering around all day with it) Comfortable keyboard (it'll get a lot of use) I find it annoying writing code on one of my Macs as there isn't a # key, and I can never remember what the key-combo is to enter one. On mine it's Option + 3, and the key combo is so engrained that I try to use the same key positions at work (on a normal, full size Microsoft keyboard with a dedicated # key (shared with ~)). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hackalive Posted March 18, 2010 Author Share Posted March 18, 2010 Yeah I like this one http://www.asus.com.au/product.aspx?P_ID=SGVGxYEAKu15BCwA as it has 1TB hard drive, good looking keyboard, 1GB RAM GPU, just not sure about the battery life Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hackalive Posted March 19, 2010 Author Share Posted March 19, 2010 The battery only lasts about 2 hours :-( can always but spare batteries Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oni-kun Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 The battery only lasts about 2 hours :-( can always but spare batteries Take a look at the current laptops on bestbuy from around $700-1300 and see what modern laptops look and perform like? You'll get a lot more than 2 hours out of them. The mac book pro may be a good (but albeit expensive) choice as it has an expensive OS where Linux is free, as in beer. I'd personally stick with the Dell or HP line, Asus tends to be dodgy with some of their products. Remember, getting him a monster (like the laptop you listed) is an expense as he is using it for work, it will most likely cost too much to replace if stolen/broken and you don't need to be able to play Crysis when you're needing to work to get a degree. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Little Guy Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 Your going to want at least 4 GB of ram. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tazerenix Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 yea you should have at least 4gb RAM. Try Compaq, there great Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 Long battery life (for wandering around all day with it) Mine only lasts about 2-2.5 hours I think. Unless you're one of those people who insist on playing games during lectures, that shouldn't be a problem. But why not let your friend's son set the requirements? He is the one who is going to use it, and if he is going to study computer science it's likely he already knows stuff about computers and has an opinion on all the Windows/OS X/Linux stuff. If it's purely for doing undergraduate CS things, you could probably get by with 1 GB of RAM, 80 GB disk space, on-board graphics card and low-end CPU. Any Linux distro would do fine with that, and if you choose a minimal window manager like xmonad you won't use a lot memory and GPU power on that. Of course if he wants to do more than just that, there is no way that computer would be adequate. Also note that computing power and battery life is often inversely proportional. Bottom line: Ask him for his requirements, not us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oni-kun Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 yea you should have at least 4gb RAM. Try Compaq, there great Not in for years has my 4GBs of RAM on my PC been eaten up, By heavy games with music and firefox with atleast a hundred tabs. Why would you specifically recommend a student get a notebook with that much in it? It's like telling someone to get an extended magazine size modded on a rifle for a hunting trip, It CAN be useful, less time to reload. But it's pointless. You're hunting animals. EDIT: Daniel0 responded just before I did, He seems to get what I am trying to say, It's pointless to buy someting so expensive if it's simply not used. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tazerenix Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 well if you want to run a decent OS your gonna need more than 1gb. To run vista you'll need at least 2 and same for windows 7. Otherwise it just runs terrible Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oni-kun Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 well if you want to run a decent OS your gonna need more than 1gb. To run vista you'll need at least 2 and same for windows 7. Otherwise it just runs terrible Most linux distributions don't even utilize sections of the RAM unless they are needed. Windows 7 is a decent OS, and it's ran fine on a 3GB RAM setup without ever going over the 1.2GB mark on load. Anything ran on it, be it Microsoft Office or Autocad for computer engineering has run on W95 w/ 512MBs DDR1-233 for decades, I don't think too much more is needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 Oh yeah, I might want to add this: daniel@daniel-laptop:~$ free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3964 1847 2116 0 490 621 -/+ buffers/cache: 735 3229 Swap: 4094 0 4094 So I'm only using about 735 MB memory for those who don't know how to read the output. well if you want to run a decent OS your gonna need more than 1gb. To run vista you'll need at least 2 and same for windows 7. Otherwise it just runs terrible And what is a decent OS, if I might ask? I'm way more productive on Linux with xmonad as my window manager than on Windows. I also know of several people who use Netbooks with only 1 GB memory, onboard graphics and Intel Atom processors. Different requirements for different people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oni-kun Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 So I'm only using about 735 MB If you're wanting to get lucrative, Windows 7 is based on MinWin and stripped can take much less than 50MBs of RAM. [battousai@myhost ~]$ free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3032 2687 344 0 245 1712 -/+ buffers/cache: 729 2303 Swap: 3153 0 3153 This Arch distro obviously takes the beating with PDF editing software, an HTTP server and a few IDE's up along with filezilla to upload required files, It depends more on the software than it does the OS when you're getting into programming and applied engineering and sciences, if you were to say use Autocad alongside other things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 Just to be clear, I'm not saying that having 4 GB memory is not a good thing. I'm just saying that it's certainly possible to get by with a lot less. Especially because memory is so cheap you might as well buy plenty of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oni-kun Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 Just to be clear, I'm not saying that having 4 GB memory is not a good thing. I'm just saying that it's certainly possible to get by with a lot less. Especially because memory is so cheap you might as well buy plenty of it. That just pins it to the choice of the person who is going to use it, Memory or the amount of is not an issue, other things like harddisk space, screen and keyboard sizes/ergonomics are much more important for a student. [ot]Daniel, answer my PM[/ot] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hackalive Posted March 19, 2010 Author Share Posted March 19, 2010 Well it has 1TB and seems pretty ergonomic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Little Guy Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 You could easily get by with 2GB, but everything runs smoother in my opinion with more, and that is if you go windows (which most do). and if he ever decides to do other things, such as video editing, that pretty much runs off ram alone, and not processor and/or graphics. the more of one thing you have the longer the computer can run with out being upgraded, and when your in school you cant afford to upgrade unless you get free school of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stooney Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 Get an Asus or Toshiba. At least 4gb RAM, 500gb HD, 15"+ screen, full keyboard, built-in bluetooth, dedicated graphics. The OS is whatever he prefers. If you're feeling giving, get him an extra battery and a wireless mouse (the microsoft arc mouse is great for portability). These specs will allow him to do everything he needs to do comfortably. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arbitter Posted March 27, 2010 Share Posted March 27, 2010 Well, if you're looking for battery life a mac would be the best I think. Problem is that then you can't change the batteries unless you hand in your MacBook and pay the price. MacBook also looks sleek, has a lot of handy features to swap between programs, easy way to share things with other Mac-users, ... It's quite pricy, but there's really a lot of features that are tremendously handy but not many people know of. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oni-kun Posted March 27, 2010 Share Posted March 27, 2010 Well, if you're looking for battery life a mac would be the best I think. Problem is that then you can't change the batteries unless you hand in your MacBook and pay the price. MacBook also looks sleek, has a lot of handy features to swap between programs, easy way to share things with other Mac-users, ... It's quite pricy, but there's really a lot of features that are tremendously handy but not many people know of. Macs come with.. 8 programs installed by default? Not even open office? And what is stuffit expander I don't get it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arbitter Posted March 27, 2010 Share Posted March 27, 2010 Well, if you're looking for battery life a mac would be the best I think. Problem is that then you can't change the batteries unless you hand in your MacBook and pay the price. MacBook also looks sleek, has a lot of handy features to swap between programs, easy way to share things with other Mac-users, ... It's quite pricy, but there's really a lot of features that are tremendously handy but not many people know of. Macs come with.. 8 programs installed by default? Not even open office? And what is stuffit expander I don't get it. Yes 8 programs; but if you buy a pc you also only get a trial version of Office 2007. You get windows media player, how many people use that. You get internet explorer, who uses that. From all the programs that were on my pc, I used IE once to install chrome, never used windows media player, never used... Well what other programs are there? Ofcourse I'm not talking about linux or ubuntu or whatever, I don' know the slightest thing about those. I'm not saying mac is the best solution, but they do have a great batterylife, userinterface, speed, ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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