High End Uni Setup Required

FunctionalDysaster

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Wales
Afternoon all,

I hope to be stating university in September, and I need a laptop. I emailed the course tutor for details on specs and this is what I got:

-Windows or a Mac that can dual boot

-512GB SSD hard drive

-No less than 4GB memory

-At least 2 USB ports, 3 would be preferable

- something mildly portable, namely not a 17" gaming laptop

-something with a VGA port, or a dongle that converts MiniDV into VGA

He also says "Buy as much laptop as money can buy"

It all sounds very expensive.
I know next to nothing about laptops or computer setups, so I'm being thrown straight in the deep end a bit.
Can anyone provide me with some advice as to a good laptop with all the necessary specs? Maybe who are good manufactures in the respective fields and what names should be steered clear of at all costs?

Cheers.
Sam
 
That's ridiculous that comment they made. As we know most college students are dirt poor and living on the ragged edge of poverty.

I have a HP G7 that's a lot of bang for the buck. Doesn't have an SSD but instead it has a 640gig mech drive. Boots bloody quick and has dual boot capability. 6 gigs of ram. It comes with a full sized HDMI and VGA ports. 2.4Ghz WiFI and hardwire LAN port. It does have a 17 inch screen but it weighs next to nothing as far as lugging it around. It's not a gaming laptop is why I brought it's 17 inch screen up even though you said your didn't want a screen that large. But with a larger screen you don't have to strain your eyeballs to read text and you can be a little farther away and still read it.

I got that one on sale at Staples for $520usd. It normally goes for $650.00usd.

If you're on a really tight budget you might want to check out Dell. You can get some low cost versions of what they want you to have. Decent bang for the buck.

Others will recommend other brand names but if I was you, I'd stick with the major players in laptops. Stay away from Toshiba and Lenovo. IMHO they are junk.
 
Aww I love my Toshiba. Going on 5 years and has not caused me any trouble. It does have a cheap case however and I don't carry it around much. I have worked on Dell and Hp and I can tell they seem to be more sturdy and look like they can stand more abuse. Next one will probably be a Dell!
 
Ok so let's scrap the toutor's requirements for a few reasons reasons - First an SSD isn't necessarily required outright, even for intensive engineering and could just be pissing away money.

Second, why VGA? Most monitors and such are DVI or HDMI and many laptops come with HDMI. Worst case an adapter to go in between all of these are available if you ever need one (laptops never ship with them).

Third and more importantly, what are you actually going to be using the laptop for? I realize you might not know specifics, so what are you going to school for so we can lead you in the right direction?
 
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what's the course -that would heavily dictate what you'll be doing with the machine...

unless you're doing something that really required that then I find that quite an odd request...

in fact telling you that you need a computer at all is a bit weird...
(when I went to uni, the only computer I had was one a mate gate me, it'd been crippled in a power strike, and most of it didn't work, the display was off because the red colour didn't work. I got a 14" monitor (CRT job) from a different friend and booted to dos and wrote most of my work using the ms dos edit program! - saving to floppy to get the text into a good format, - I'd then just hit the library the next day and copy and paste into word...)
 
I find it strange that the tutor specified a 512GB SSD hard drive. I can't think of any practical application that actually REQUIRES a large SSD drive. If the course is an engineering one, then it would have made more sense to recommend something with a workstation graphics card etc.
 
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