Laptop for a college kid

[BigN8]

hoping some of you computer experts out there can recommend a good laptop for my college bound daughter. She wants a Mac of course. I just want something is the best value. I don't mind spending the money for the Mac, but if there is something cheaper and equally good, let me know. My latest Consumer Reports magazine ranked a few other laptops above the Mac

 

[Murf'n'surf]

hoping some of you computer experts out there can recommend a good laptop for my college bound daughter. She wants a Mac of course. I just want something is the best value. I don't mind spending the money for the Mac, but if there is something cheaper and equally good, let me know. My latest Consumer Reports magazine ranked a few other laptops above the Mac

The most important thing I would look at is what operating system my child was well versed in. No sense in sending her to college with a computer that she cant operate/navigate well.

 

[scokill]

I have 2 kids in college...one with Mac and one with PC. They are both well versed in both. Kids are fluent in technology, so that is not a big consideration in my opinion. Mac is on the worst end of the value spectrum. My daughter has MacBook Air and paid for it with a lot of her own money. It's held up through 3 years of college with her starting her 4th. I will say it has served her well. She had one class that used an excel plugin that was windows based and she has to use an emulator, but there are other classes in the business school where kids can only do work in the lab if they have a Mac, but I don't think it's very many. We checked this out before we invested in the Mac.

My son has ASUS laptop...not the cheapest...probably mid tier I want to say it was around $400. I had a SSD laying around and did a clean install of windows 10 and this laptop can really do anything now and it's pretty fast. It's made it through one year OK.

Check the campus as they may have a technology store that has some good discounts. I know that University of Texas has good discounts on Apple, Dell, and other computers and Microsoft Office is pretty much free.

 

[mraz72]

the thing about Mac is kids, especially girls want them because they match their shoes. What I mean is they are fashionable, not the best.

I agree with Scokill, they are over priced for what you get PLUS, I am not a fan of the OS.

Apple couldn't write their own OS so they grabbed a linux version and modified that

Pick up a solid windows laptop, get Office 365 (OneDrive 1TB of storage, syncs with all phones and laptops) and you will be good to go.

I LOVE my surface pro but they are on the high end of windows pricing, I think mine was close to 2k (8gb mem, i7 256gb HD).

If you are looking for specs I would say get AT LEAST 8GB of memory

 

[scokill]

the thing about Mac is kids, especially girls want them because they match their shoes. What I mean is they are fashionable, not the best.

I agree with Scokill, they are over priced for what you get PLUS, I am not a fan of the OS.

Apple couldn't write their own OS so they grabbed a linux version and modified that

Pick up a solid windows laptop, get Office 365 (OneDrive 1TB of storage, syncs with all phones and laptops) and you will be good to go.

I LOVE my surface pro but they are on the high end of windows pricing, I think mine was close to 2k (8gb mem, i7 256gb HD).

If you are looking for specs I would say get AT LEAST 8GB of memory

I absolutely love the Surface Pro and had Microsoft had this a number of years earlier they could really dominate. I do photo editing on my custom built desktop and it is no slouch with 32 GB ram, SSD, OC'd I7, etc. etc., but would love a tricked out i7 surface pro. Just can't justify the cost.

 

[mraz72]

I absolutely love the Surface Pro and had Microsoft had this a number of years earlier they could really dominate. I do photo editing on my custom built desktop and it is no slouch with 32 GB ram, SSD, OC'd I7, etc. etc., but would love a tricked out i7 surface pro. Just can't justify the cost.

I've had so many laptops and devices throughout the years and I have to say, the surface pro is my favorite of all time, it is an amazing device. But, as you said, carried a hefty price tag. I'm hoping Microsoft stays with the surface line and continues to improve them...

 

[buckbuck]

Love my Surface Pro also. Bought one for my daughter last year as she started college and bought one for myself a few months ago. Both were bought off of Craigslist. Do what @Michael Rasmussen says and do not settle for less than 8GB of memory.

 

[0627Devildog]

Go MacbookPro. . . . It will last through Graduate school without issue. . . . .

 

[Bruce]

My perspective which comes from decades of buying and using laptops for work and supporting @Rana's art school and art teaching needs is that if you buy a decent PC you should plan to replace it every two years or every five years for a MacBook. If you are going with a PC I would look at Dell Latitudes which have an internal metal frame that really adds to longevity. If you buy the $400 special then expect to replace it every year. Currently I am using a 2012 model 15" MacBook Pro Retina. I have purchased several Mac's for Rana but it is the first Mac I purchased for myself. The retina display was a deciding factor at the time. So much so that I preordered it and have one of the first batch. I have not upgraded since it still works perfectly and the later models do not offer sufficient additional capability to justify the upgrade.

 

[0627Devildog]

My perspective which comes from decades of buying and using laptops for work and supporting @Rana's art school and art teaching needs is that if you buy a decent PC you should plan to replace it every two years or every five years for a MacBook. If you are going with a PC I would look at Dell Latitudes which have an internal metal frame that really adds to longevity. If you buy the $400 special then expect to replace it every year. Currently I am using a 2012 model 15" MacBook Pro Retina. I have purchased several Mac's for Rana but it is the first Mac I purchased for myself. The retina display was a deciding factor at the time. So much so that I preordered it and have one of the first batch. I have not upgraded since it still works perfectly and the later models do not offer sufficient additional capability to justify the upgrade.

Had our MacBook Pro since 2011. . . . No signs of slowing down.

 

[Bruce]

Had our MacBook Pro since 2011. . . . No signs of slowing down.

@Rana still has a 13" MacBook Pro from 2006 that works fine. It was one of the first batch of intel powered MacBooks. She currently uses a 2013 13" Retina but the kids occasionally power up the 2006 model.

The oldest PC in the family is a 2011 Dell Latitude 6xxx that I paid ~$2400 for. I passed it on to my mother who used it in her school but upgraded to a 13" MacBoom Retina last year. I purchased two high end PC laptops between 2006 and 2011. One failed before 2011, the other soon after.

On the desktop side I use a 2009 MacPro upgraded to a 2.66 Ghz quad Xeon, 32 GB of Ram, 4.5 TB of Fusion Drive and an Nvidia GTX 770 graphics card driving a 4K monitor and a second HD display. The old Mac Pros are highly upgradeable with great longetivity. I am considering upgrading to 3.2 quad Xeon and keeping it for a few more years.

 

[2nazt]

My MacBook Air is from 09 and still running strong. Wish I would or got the Pro for some better interface issues with Adobe and etc. also I have to run windows after partioning the HD for some classes in college that needed Windows exclusive OS. That is the only bummer I've had with mine.

Also Mac and military don't mix so all my Military software was on the partionied HD.

 

[mraz72]

the "I have a mac and it still works" argument is meaningless because a windows laptop in that price range would last just as long.

 

[BigN8]

From my consumer reports magazine here are the top rated laptops 12 to 13" screens
Vaio Z
LG Gram 13 touchscreen
HP Spectre x360 13t
Microsoft Surface Laptop
HP Spectre x360 13-AC013DX
Dell XPS 13 convertible
Vaio Z Flip
Microsoft Surface
Apple MAcbook Pro

 

[Bruce]

the "I have a mac and it still works" argument is meaningless because a windows laptop in that price range would last just as long.

Having purchased high end PC laptops for myself and MacBook Pros for my teacher wife, both of us using them daily I found that her Macs lasted two and half times as long as my PCs. At that time the PCs that I was purchasing were often more expensive than the Macs. In 2012 I switched to a 15" MacPro Retina and remain happy with it.

 

[mraz72]

Having purchased high end PC laptops for myself and MacBook Pros for my teacher wife, both of us using them daily I found that her Macs lasted two and half times as long as my PCs. At that time the PCs that I was purchasing were often more expensive than the Macs. In 2012 I switched to a 15" MacPro Retina and remain happy with it.

You obviously bought the wrong PCs

 

[BigN8]

Settle down bro! It's just freakin computers. I appreciate everyone's input. It seems PC vs. Mac is like Ford vs. Chevy or fog vs. no fog. I'm just trying to get the best machine for my kid to get through school and spend the least amount of money. Thanks for the input and please feel free to add more input. I plan to get something in about 2 weeks. Does solid state drive mean it doesn't have the hard drive that has to spin up? Meaning when you hit the power button the thing comes right on?

I'm really surprised that LG model is rated so high. I may go look at one at Bestbuy or Costco.

 

[mraz72]

Sorry, you're right, long standing argument (not with anyone here) lol. I meant to say, and I did so in a poor manner, was that you have to compare apples to apples with this stuff.

In the laptop world i am not sure you could buy a machine without a solid state hard drive today, maybe on the cheaper side. Solid state is like you said, no spinning stuff inside. Everything from starting the machine to normal tasks are faster with solid state, definitely look for it.

Here are some decent specs

Mem - at least 8 GB
Hard Drive - solid state 250gb? debatable, especially with so much cloud storage
screen size - totally up to you, 13 seems to be a popular size
CPU - i5 or i7, i7 is faster

 

[scokill]

Settle down bro! It's just freakin computers. I appreciate everyone's input. It seems PC vs. Mac is like Ford vs. Chevy or fog vs. no fog. I'm just trying to get the best machine for my kid to get through school and spend the least amount of money. Thanks for the input and please feel free to add more input. I plan to get something in about 2 weeks. Does solid state drive mean it doesn't have the hard drive that has to spin up? Meaning when you hit the power button the thing comes right on?
I'm really surprised that LG model is rated so high. I may go look at one at Bestbuy or Costco.

As mentioned above, I have kids with both PC and Mac. It all comes down to your budget. You can find a laptop that will be sufficient for almost any budget. More money will buy a better computer but most likely will not add any (or little) value for a college student. If they are engineering, business school, etc., you need to check with that college within the university for the specs of recommended computer.

FYI ...From University of Texas Engineering --Windows 10 64-bit (required software for courses will NOT run under MacOS)

 

[smack]

I've been in IT for about 25 years and have pretty much run it all. I've got two teenage daughters and one 21 year old in college as well as wife who is technically challenged. Once you decide between PC and Mac, I would go with the following;

PC - Dell Latitude or Dell XPS - decent warranty and quite frequently on sale (I use the slickdeals site to monitor for sales and pricing).

Apple - All three of my kids run MacBook Airs (I'm typing this on my 2013 MacBook Air - one of the best portable computer's I've owned) - I run them with Parallels to allow me to run both Mac and Windows operating systems. My wife runs a MacBook Pro because she wanted the DVD player and had less need to be portable.

Based on budget I would select the following;

$500 Range - Dell Latitude 34xx or 35xx series

$800 Range - Refurb or clearance MacBook Air - I've also seen new ones frequently for $799 at BestBuy recently. Apple refurbs (from apple.com) are as good as a new one and carry the same warranty.

$1000+ - Macbook Pro or Dell XPS

I'm not a fanboy of either - I enforce Dell only at work as part of our policy and run all Macs in the house because I wanted my kids to get experienced on both PCs and Macs (they use PCs at school) - Properly maintained, PC or Mac will serve you well - these days everything on the inside is the same anyways (CPU/Memory/Drive). Windows OS requires more frequent care in my experience, generally due to all the manufacturer bloatware that everyone loads on them, but perform just as well as Macs.

Happy to answer any questions you might have - happy shopping!