Laptops

donvito99

(This may be better suited to the dedicated laptop forum, but I'll try here as its UCD specific)

I've been offered a place at the Quinn school, and they've told me I need a laptop. They have an arrangement with a company offering what looks like two different laptops (both HP) for €749 and €949.

Should I buy one of the two, or can I get a better deal elsewhere? Do other courses do things the same way?

There's a litany of stuff on software which is common to both, and there is specific training at orientation for this software (edubook, ). The dearer one appears to be lighter, as far as i can tell. The models are; HP 655 Notebook, and HP 4340 ProBook, if that's of any relevance.

There is a financing arrangement also with AIB.

[tl;dr version]

Should I buy what they've asked me to buy, and avoid the hassle?
Should I buy something elsewhere?
Are these sorts of schemes usually worth the expense, from your experience?

Better Call Saul_BB

Both of them are average laptops at best.

You could get far better spec through Dell, second hand on places like Adverts, Donedeal etc or just keep an eye out for a decent sale offer in PC World etc.

Without melting your head with too many specs, try and get the following with any purchase:

1/ At least 4 GB of Ram - 8gb ideally
2/ SSD - This is a different type of hard drive. It is by far the most cost effective way to see massive performance improvements. 128gb is a good size to go for.
3/ An i5 processor - i3 can do the job, but most new i5's (codename IvyBridge) will come with integrated graphics Intel 4000 which is fairly reasonable performance wise for everything except gaming.
4/ Personally I find a 13 inch laptop perfect if you plan on carrying it around a lot.

Muir

These are the required specs if you're buying your own:
http://www.ucd.ie/quinn/studentlife/ourlearningenvironment/technologyquinn/quinnlaptopprogramme/supplyingyourownlaptop/

Quinn include some things like microsoft office, which usually costs extra, and it's one of the requirements so you need to get it. The Sophos antivirus they have is actually free to get from software for u on your UCD connect account.

To be fair though, you could buy that HP655 from HP themselves considerably cheaper, I found it for €365. Even adding in Office on top of that it's much cheaper than what they're charging.

donvito99

Thanks for the replies. What they're looking for does seem like a lot.