College Freshman looking for advice

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Dominus Anulorunm

n00b
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Apr 10, 2012
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I am in the market for a laptop for college and I need some advice on what to upgrade. I was traveling this year, so I got back too late to get a real job. I worked for my dad instead, and he has given me a budget of $1000 for a laptop. Any money I do not spend on the laptop I keep, which would be helpful as I have too many classes to get a part time job during the year. I already have a nice desktop pc, so I have been looking at ultrabooks (but I am open to anything).
The one I am looking at right now is the HP Envy 4. It got a solid review from pc mag and it costs about $700 with student discounts. It comes with the stanard laptop features, a 720p screen, 4gb of RAM, a 500gb hdd, and a sandy bridge i3. I have two questions though:

1.Should I upgrade to an ivy bridge i5 for $100, or keep the i3 and add a 7670m (I could do the ivy bridge and the 7670m, but it is a bit of a stretch money-wise)?

2. Should I buy the ssd cache for faster boot times? I do not really want it as I do not mind the wait (I put my computer to sleep most of the time anyway).

I have a desktop which packs quite a punch, so it does not need uber amounts of power, but I will be doing light to moderate gaming on it occasionally, so keep that in mind. Finally, if anyone know of another good model for $800 or less, let me know.
 
I probably wouldn't spring for dedicated graphics on your laptop if you've already got a nice desktop you're going to bring with you. For moderate gaming on a budget, your best bet is an Ivy bridge CPU with the HD 4000 graphics which is half-way decent.

SSD cache does more than just help boot times, it will help program launch times within the OS as well as other common actions. If you have an SSD in your desktop, you'll probably want this option. If you don't have an SSD in your desktop, don't bother. Getting a your first SSD isn't terribly noticeable but going from an SSD to a platter drive is torture.


I'm a big fan in general of the Dell Outlet. It's just better when there are coupons, and I don't know of any good coupons currently. If you have a week or two to look around some new codes will probably pop up. My buddy got an Inspiron 15R, Ivy Bridge i5-3210m, 8GB ram, 1TB HDD ect for $390 (pre-tax) last week.

Lenovo has some good deals on the X230, through their B&N affiliate (just register, no verification).
You wouldd definitely want to get the Ivy Bridge i5-3210m upgrade (only $30 is a steal) and the premium (IPS) panel.
This config came to $670:
i5-3120m Ivy Bridge, 1x4GB Ram, 500GB HDD, Premium Panel 1366x768 IPS, 6-cell battery (4-cell standard).
 
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I forgot to mention that the video card/i3 combo is cheaper by $25. But that Lenovo looks like an excellent deal and it is well under budget. I will check the dell outlet as well. Anyone else have a suggestion.
 
The Microsoft Store is running a couple of deals:
Online or In-store purchase a windows computer for $699 or more and they'll throw in an xbox 360 (arcade).

In-store only: Purchases $500-$999 get 15% off, $1k and up 20% off. If you're near a physical MS store this could be nice for something like the new UX32A-DB51 Zenbook Prime (Ivy i5 3317m, 500+24 Hybrid drive, 4GB ram). It's right at $1k MSRP, but if you're near an MS store, and they have one in stock, $800 isn't too bad for a slice of sexy like the Zenbook.
 
Dominus Anulorunm said:
I forgot to mention that the video card/i3 combo is cheaper by $25. But that Lenovo looks like an excellent deal and it is well under budget. I will check the dell outlet as well. Anyone else have a suggestion.
Click to expand...

Yeah, looking at the configuration options, the video card is quite a deal relatively speaking. Might as well go with the dedicated card instead of an Ivy upgrade in that situation!
 
I am liking the Lenovo though, especially with an iOS screen option. It is also roughly $100 cheaper. The deal ends on Wednesday though, so I have to decide soon...
 
One more question. I checked the dell outlet store and they have an xps 15z with an i5-2410m and an nvidia 525 (sadly only a 720p screen) for $800 or less, depending on its condition. Is this a good deal? And how often does the outlet release coupons?
 
There's also the Business & Education side of the outlet, which will have Latitudes and Vostros. The problem with most of those is that they're not big on graphics.

E6420
14" 1600x900 Premium Panel
i5-2520m Sandy bridge
NVS 4200M 512MB graphics??
320GB hdd
4GB ram
$630 after coupon

E5420
14" 1600x900 screen
i5-2410m Sandy Bridge
Craptastic HD 3000 graphics
500gb HDD
4GB Ram
$404 after coupon
 
Dominus Anulorunm said:
One more question. I checked the dell outlet store and they have an xps 15z with an i5-2410m and an nvidia 525 (sadly only a 720p screen) for $800 or less, depending on its condition. Is this a good deal? And how often does the outlet release coupons?
Click to expand...

If you're getting near $800, go back and check out the Lenovo Y series.
I don't know why no one makes a decent screen for a laptop. I had a Dell Inspiron 8200 over 10 years ago that had a 1600x1200 15" screen.

Y480 $829
3rd generation Intel Core i7-3610QM Processor( 2.30GHz 6MB)
NVIDIA GeForce GT640M-LE 2GB
8.0GB PC3-12800 DDR3 SDRAM 1600 MHz
14.0" HD Glare with integrated camera 1366x768
1TB 5400+32GB SSD

Y470p $749
2nd generation Intel Core i7-2670QM Processor( 2.2GHz 1333MHz 6MB)
AMD Radeon HD 7690 1GB
8.0GB PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM 1333 MHz
14.0" HD Glare with integrated camera 1366x768
750GB 5400 rpm

Y580 $879
3rd generation Intel Core i7-3610QM Processor( 2.30GHz 6MB)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX660M 2GB
8.0GB PC3-12800 DDR3 SDRAM 1600 MHz
15.6" HD Glare with integrated camera 1366x768
1TB 5400 rpm
 
My advice to someone in your situation would be to wait to see how classes go, and also see what windows 8 brings, could be some great tablet / ultra book combinations that would be real nice for note taking.

You dont want to buy something then realize it just does not fit with how classes are really run etc.. Or maybe you thought you would not game but you realized in the down time between classes you do want to.
 
Honestly, I suggest getting a HP Elite book (or any other business laptop), during my freshmen year my laptop got beat up, and since you have a good desktop there is zero reason to have a "gaming" laptop like the envy, get a durable laptop (a business one...) and have good specs and it will last you through a few years, my elite book I got 2 years ago going into university is still going strong.
 
I won't be using it for the actual note taking. I don't type fast enough. What I am going to use it for is compiling my notes. I am going to re-write them on the laptop and organize them. The reason I am looking for decent graphics power is for vacations and traveling. As for windows 8 and tablets, I haven't really though of it. I am not particularly thrilled with windows 8 and I do not see a need in my life for a tablet.
 
You will get faster at typing if you do it, its pretty hard to be slower at typing than writing, it wont last long.
But your ideas for how you are going to do things are just more reason to wait and see how it really goes. Profs will often give power points so you dont have that much writing and it becomes way easier to keep them on a computer than to print them constantly and write one them.

The advantage to a tablet and windows 8 is going to be touch screens you can draw on for note taking that are working together with a laptop grade computer that can actually play games and run real software like office and one note.

If I was just talking about tablets I could say buy a transformer its more the marriage of tablets with laptops that is so powerful in this situation.
 
Bah. Forget Win8. Get a convertible Lenovo (with Tablet screen) if you must. We have zero idea of the microsoft products will even exist and what price point they will reach.

You didn't say what your major is. If technical, get the i5 over the i3, as you won't want to have to return home to do work on your desktop all the time. There are times when having that desktop will be nice if you are in engineering, though, as you can run stuff on both machines or write on one while doing something else on the other. It is a nice option if you can afford it.

Learn how to type the proper way. Get to the online typing tutor. I can't believe typing is not required for everyone today.

If you are technical, you will need to write by hand. You can't just read notes from profs, you need to work through them on paper. Then work homeworks and examples. Otherwise, you will never really get what is going on. Anything you can learn, you will learn better if it goes in through your eyes and comes out through your hands (while getting processed by your brain).
 
Let me put it another way. I don't like taking notes directly onto a laptop. I am a pencil and paper kind of guy, but I will be using the laptop to re-write and organize my notes. My major is a liberal arts major but I am doing pre-med. As for windows 8, I am not big in waiting for the next thing. After windows 8 comes out haswell and new cards will be right around the corner. I think I am going to buy the dell 15z. It has a decent gpu, a powerful processor, it is made of metal (so it's faiy sturdy), and it is only $600 right now.
 
I decided to buy the Dell XPS 15z from the outlet. For $600, it was a steal, considering that Dell stopped selling it only a few months ago.
 
I am sorry to triple post, but I would rather add on to this thread than start a new one. My younger brother is also looking for a new laptop and I am trying to help him. He does not need much, but we were hoping to find something semi-competent with old games like thief 3 and galactic civ 2. This is the one we are looking at right now: ASUS A53Z-AS61. Would it be adequate for old games?
 
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Dominus Anulorunm said:
Let me put it another way. I don't like taking notes directly onto a laptop. I am a pencil and paper kind of guy, but I will be using the laptop to re-write and organize my notes. My major is a liberal arts major but I am doing pre-med. As for windows 8, I am not big in waiting for the next thing. After windows 8 comes out haswell and new cards will be right around the corner. I think I am going to buy the dell 15z. It has a decent gpu, a powerful processor, it is made of metal (so it's faiy sturdy), and it is only $600 right now.
Click to expand...

Speaking from experience - the premed req courses you're going to want a pen/pencil and paper. Way too many diagrams for a laptop to be reasonably useful. For everything else, a laptop is better IMO. Much faster.

Also speaking from experience, you won't have much time to reorganize your notes, especially once you get to the tougher courses.
 
Dominus Anulorunm said:
I decided to buy the Dell XPS 15z from the outlet. For $600, it was a steal, considering that Dell stopped selling it only a few months ago.
Click to expand...

I'm also interested in this laptop. My only question, does it have a webcam? I can't seem to figure out if it does or now. Thanks!
 
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