I need a new laptop for school.

ally.mcdonagh

Hi guys. I am looking for a laptop for school, but not sure which one I should go for. If y'all know the pro's and con's to these laptops that I have picked out, I'd really appreciate it.

Sony Vaio S Series 15.5" SVS15116GGB

Sony Vaio F Series 16.4" VPC-F24L1E - i5 2450M/4GB/640GB

Dell XPS 15 (N00B1540)

I can't think of any other brands. If y'all could advise some too?:) The price range would be between 1000-1500. And a 15" screen..

I would probably need to figure out the proper one by the end of next month or so.

Thanks,
Ally.x:)

Torqay

ally.mcdonagh wrote: »

The price range doesn't matter at the moment.

Ya lucky b******!

Seriously, if money doesn't matter, I wouldn't buy any of these. You really should be a bit more specific re budget and usage requirements.

ComputerKing

If price range doesn't matter I'd go with the new Mac Book Pro.

ally.mcdonagh

Haha. Well its my parents buying it for me. But if it were up to my parents it would probably be 1500 and under. So this is probably the main amount they would spend on it.

Really? Hmm, I have no idea on which one to buy now. I am not the best with this laptop type of stuff.

I would be using it for school mostly. I'd need good battery. Good Storage. Fast working. Any idea's on a good laptop brand?

Thanks.
-Ally.x

Torqay

ally.mcdonagh wrote: »

I'd need good battery. Good Storage. Fast working. Any idea's on a good laptop brand?

Lenovo's new Uktrabook maybe? The latest Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor, 32 GB SSD + 500 GB HDD hybrid drive (nice compromise between speed and storage), 7 hrs battery life. €819 @ komplett.ie, available in pink and blue

Allyall

Torqay wrote: »

Lenovo's new Uktrabook maybe? The latest Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor, 32 GB SSD + 500 GB HDD hybrid drive (nice compromise between speed and storage), 7 hrs battery life. €819 @ komplett.ie, available in pink and blue

+1 on that. It's HERE CHEAPER

EDIT:

Noticed you want a 15 + inch screen.

THIS Lenovo Z580 + £100 Cashback (2.65Kg)

Or

Samsung CHRONOS 700z - Slightly Lighter (2.2Kg)

When you have an unlimited budget, and only need it for smaller tasks, you could really go with anything. :-)

Overheal

if youre serious about it being for school and you will use this in class or regular transport you're not looking at anything bigger than a 15.6" screen. A 14" would probably even be preferable; but at least with a 15.6" you have a NUM pad still, which is more or less handy to have for just about every major.

My favorite all around laptop SKU at the moment, for price-to-performance and general quality would have to be HP's M6-1035DX. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+15.6%26%2334%3B+Pavilion+Laptop+-+6GB+Memory+-+640GB+Hard+Drive+-+Midnight+Black/5608338.p?id=1218672045876&skuId=5608338&st=m6-1035dx&cp=1&lp=1

It has good graphics, which is built into the AMD A10 CPU (officially, it's called in Accelerated Processing Unit, APU, since it's a hybrid CPU with an Actual GPU hardware on the die) Which will handle most PC games much less most applications, including video and photo editing (Over 200 programs including most Adobe software is designed to be hardware-accelerated by AMD's APUs). The processing power itself is nothing to balk at either. While officially clocked at a slower Ghz speed than say, an i5, The A10 benchmarks far higher on comparison tools like Passmark.

The other thing I really like about the AMD cpu's is the energy efficiency. The model gets up to 9.5 hours of battery life; you'll probably average over 6-8 hrs most of the time. And it has 2.1 Beats Audio - with a subwoofer. The lid and top of the keyboard area are both metal for extra durability. If you can find this SKU or similar SKUs in the M6 series, strongly consider them.

Obviously of course if I had unlimited funds I'd say a 13" or 15" Macbook Pro, because those are built incredibly well, but you can get the M6, plus everything else you need, for under the cost of a 15" macbook pro. With the money you save, get a good multi-year accident plan (protect it as long as you can through your degree period, so you dont go out of pocket for repairs later, which usually could be a €200-400 endeavor - per incident - depending on the issue), your Microsoft Office software (The University edition if its available in ireland), and anything else you need, like a printer. Good printer? HP Photosmart 5520 - works with apple devices, real easy to use, does 2-sided printouts, and can create it's own wireless connection with your laptop if you are going to be living somewhere where they don't let you do printer-sharing on their existing network (most college-run accommodations don't allow this for instance - and if they do, you run into the situation where there could be dozens or more printers on the network making it hard to know which one is yours... you could print your homework out 6 doors down the hall by mistake)

If not those laptops you can also look at something smaller: depends on how often you really need a big screen, a NUM pad, or a dvd drive. If your answer to all 3 is "not all the time" or "seldom" then look at the ASUS Zenbook (model UX31 or UX32) or the Macbook air 13". For how light and zippy these laptops are, they can definitely be worth it. The M6 is a much better jack of all trades though.

ally.mcdonagh

Thanks. I will look into that. Looks like a great deal.


Thanks again.
-Ally.x

sealgaire

kids use laptops in school now?

Overheal

sealgaire wrote: »

kids use laptops in school now?

In the US you're expected to own a PC and be able to do homework in Powerpoint by Middle School. Depends on the school, but getting increasingly common, and earlier

Torqay

I don't see this HP model offered in Ireland or the UK.

There are much better, in-depth benchmarks than Passmark. Whether or not the A10 Triton APU is a match for the Ivy Bridge Core i5 is debatable, certainly not when it comes to raw CPU power and cache bandwidth (in these realms it can't even hold a candle to the old Sandy Bridge Core i5). The graphics are arguably way ahead of Intel's GMA.

Overheal

so is the battery life on average. And since most people use their PCs for web browsing more than half of their productive time (full of graphics) the benefits are there. IE9 also responds well to the hardware acceleration. We are in agreement though that in theory the APU's aren't as fast at "number crunching" as iCore but it does have plenty to stand on.

My favorite reminder to customers when they ask "why should I care about graphics?" Is because the last time they probably bought a computer, youtube was a twinkle in someone's eye. Those laptops weren't specced or designed to run today's internet. What about internet 2015? Even boards.ie has moved on an runs a pretty intensive javascript navigation bar that will bring much older computers to their knees (but that most modern machines can handle with barely thinking about).

JGeek

Sony Vaio SVS15116GGB looks like a good idea to me. You may also like these laptops: Dell XPS X15Z-7502ELS and ASUS N56VZ-DS71

I like them both, but they are different. I would say Dell is more powerful and better suits your needs for school, but on the other hand - ASUS will last for much longer time without having to recharge it and it has much better graphics. Both of them are good. If I had to choose from these two, I would pick a Dell, but I am not in your situation. I don't play games now, I don't need such a good graphics, fancy look, subwoofers and all the other cool stuff. I use my laptop for programming mostly, so all I care about is a good processor, good amount of RAM and battery life