laptop for CS and IT?

danielgalway

hi all, this is going out for the any student doing CS and IT in NUIG . im guessing a laptop is needed . if so what specs would be needed ?? was looking at these 2 .

http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_TimelineX_5830T_1091463.html

http://www.dell.com/ie/p/inspiron-15r-5520/pd.aspx?c=ie&cs=iedhs1&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn (the €519 euro one)

Raging_Ninja

having a laptop might be handy, but it's not essential.

the type of laptop you get depends upon what you will be doing with it - if all you want to do is college stuff then the ones you linked to will be fine.

macs are worse than useless since you can't do development on them. anything that has 4+ GB RAM, a couple hundred GB disk space will do for the basics (dreamspark provides visual studio 2010 and other goodies free to IT students).

aido179

Don't worry about software, MSDNA will have you sorted. Anything with a wide enough keyboard that you can type on comfortably and 4 or more gb or RAM will be grand. Of course, don't go apple. There are a few guys in my year (final year 2012/2013) who use ubuntu but the vast majority are windows 7.

I wouldnt even worry about having a large HDD. Buy an external one if you are at all worried.

Go light and sturdy. Programming doesn't require high specs.

danielgalway

thanks for getting back to me. so would an average latop also be ok for everyday use like watching movies and youtube , facebook etc?

Raging_Ninja

danielgalway wrote: »

thanks for getting back to me. so would an average latop also be ok for everyday use like watching movies and youtube , facebook etc?

yes...

aido179

I my opinion yeah. There are die hards that will argue that you need a better one but to be honest, an average laptop is best. especially if you intent to bring it with you into college regularly like I do. It will get a few knocks and you don't want to be worrying about a grand of brittle plastic in your bag.

I'm typing this on my college laptop which I bought in September of my first year in laptec on Woodquay. Sumsung R519. 4gb/200gb. Still going strong three Operating systems later.

Squeeonline

I am a little worried about someone going into CS/IT and doesn't get the basics of owning a laptop. I get that you might not have one, I didn't until almost 2nd year, but a little background independant research wouldn't kill you.

danielgalway

i know the basics of laptops... just looking for other peoples opinions

Raging_Ninja

danielgalway wrote: »

i know the basics of laptops... just looking for other peoples opinions

to be fair, you just asked if an average laptop would be able to use facebook or youtube.

aido179

Raging_Ninja wrote: »

to be fair, you just asked if an average laptop would be able to use facebook or youtube.

No need to be patronising.

A knowledge of computer hardware performance is completely unnecessary for writing good code and managing/designing a project, which is what IT is. The rest will come. Being immersed in tech culture makes it get into your skin.

Raging_Ninja

aido179 wrote: »

A knowledge of computer hardware performance is completely unnecessary for writing good code and managing/designing a project

that's not true...

aido179

Raging_Ninja wrote: »

that's not true...

In university it is.

Ficheall

Raging_Ninja wrote: »

that's not true...

I'm going to have to agree with aido here - I know nothing about hardware, but I've written a fair amount of, what I hope is, passable code.

danielgalway

thanks for the help decided on a laptop in the end

Raging_Ninja

Ficheall wrote: »

I'm going to have to agree with aido here - I know nothing about hardware, but I've written a fair amount of, what I hope is, passable code.

You have to know the limitations of the systems you're code will be operating on, and then try to eke whatever you can out of them.

The sad fact is that many companies' hardware is lacking and so while in college you can get away with writing code that you think might be good, it will murder the clients' machines (you would not believe the amount of time that goes into simply chasing memory leaks).

aido179

Raging_Ninja wrote: »

(you would not believe the amount of time that goes into simply chasing memory leaks).

*Not turning a thread into an argument about a silly requirement you made up in your head*

A Summer of working for IBM says I would.