The Lad is off to Uni later this month. Unfortunately his Packard Bell laptop is still not working as it should, he'll need a new one.
He's studying History and Philosophy so main use apart from browsing etc will be research and essay writing, no complex spreadsheets or CAD type stuff. He will need plenty of HDD space though for extensive music collection. He's got a TV/DVD for movies so an optical drive, while desirable for software installs is not essential.
Processor would ideally be Intel i5 but i3 would probably be OK.
Conservative old Dad suggests something more office than 'consumer' spec so 14" screen and reasonably slim/light for ease of hauling between lectures, halls and library etc. Maybe Win7 rather than 8. He accepts the stuff about weight but wants W8 and a touch screen.
I'm chary of the latter, to much complication, likely to fail before anything else and I suspect it will be less sharp than a standard.
My suggestion is tinyurl.com/mx8hjly
He's after tinyurl.com/lm662o7
Does the panel have any thought/better recommendations?
Also, is there a move in ultra books towards omitting ethernet connection? We've seen one or two that suggest they lack this facility. As connection in halls may be wired ethernet is essential.
TIA
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Sat 7 Sep 13 at 17:07
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Does he need all the music on the laptop all the time - if it won't fit on a laptop (and anything HD based will be quite spacious these days) he can always have an external USB drive.
I agree a 14" laptop might be more useful size... but you'll find laptops with 15.6" screens cheaper and more of a selection. Definitely see if you can get Windows 7 IMO but you might struggle now unless you buy something without an OS and install yourself.
I think Ultra books (including MacBook Airs) are dropping Ethernet connections and rely on either WiFi or a USB Ethernet adapter.
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>> Does he need all the music on the laptop all the time - if it
>> won't fit on a laptop (and anything HD based will be quite spacious these days)
>> he can always have an external USB drive.
He does. His laptop is where purchased/ripped music goes and to which his I-Pod is synched. He needs that number of GB 'overhead' before calculating usual need.
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>> >> Does he need all the music on the laptop all the time - if
>> it
>> >> won't fit on a laptop (and anything HD based will be quite spacious these
>> days)
>> >> he can always have an external USB drive.
>>
>> He does. His laptop is where purchased/ripped music goes and to which his I-Pod is
>> synched. He needs that number of GB 'overhead' before calculating usual need.
But it doesn't need to be on a hard drive inside the laptop. It could then be used, in any other machine if he wanted as well, using something like media monkey.
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Hey, Brompton Junior, read my lips. YOU DONT WANT WINDOWS 8 WITH A TOUCH SCREEN - ITS UTTER CRAP.
Any i5 Lenovo with a big enough screen will do the job. Stick the music on a separate USB hard drive so its portable between devices.
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My son's uni laptop is a 16" Sony. You will not believe the tough life laptops get at uni so build quality is vital and as they will be spending long periods (hopefully!) staring at the screen typing - 14" may prove tiring on the eyes. Make sure he gets a decent sized "man bag" for lugging it around not a branded laptop bag or even go for a suitably sized rucksack to accommodate all the other stuff they take to lectures. It goes without saying that a decent antivirus will be needed and most universities will run a check on the laptop looking for the antivirus before you can connect to the campus network. Worth checking with Software4Students www.software4students.co.uk/ about a copy of MS Office.
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Second the rucksack notion. Cases that look like laptop cases are more likely to be pinched, whereas a rucksack is standard student kit and could contain anything.
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Having seen how students are using laptops at university now, here's my view;
- speed of starting from power on is more important than raw power
- using a small device makes it much easier to use in class - consider using with larger monitor, keyboard and mouse back in the halls of residence
- find out about any specific software used on the course - for example, our students can get a fee 3D CAD licence for a year which is very useful, BUT, the software does not work with MACs and there are fairly stiff minimum requirements
- as mentioned above, the more well built, the better.
- battery life is important, as even if a power socket is available, people tripping over trailing leads cause a lot of damage to laptops in class
- while there are special deals on microsoft software, using other software may offer better protection against plagiarism - sadly, we see far too much of this. Password protected screensavers are also useful in this regard.
- rucksack is a good plan. I don't think I've seen a student carrying an obviously "laptop" bag, and one would stand out like a dog at a cat show.
- beginning to use the referencing / bibliography tools in the word processing software from day one is a good plan. One area where I consistently find mself using the red pen is when students either don't reference a source, or do it so badly that you couldn't identify the source if you tried. Getting this right from day one will pay for itself again and again in terms of the marks obtained. While I could rant on about referencing junk like wikipedia, I won't....
- Check to see how the department will accept work. As an example, we accept work on USB stick, and on CD, as well as a hard copy. The electronic copy allows us to use tools like turn it in to check for plagiarism. For CAD work, the electronic model allows us to track the build of the model (and which student number was logged in at the computer!).
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>> speed of starting from power on is more important than raw power
Consider using sleep... or an SSD drive.
>> battery life is important
Some machines, especially business class, support swapping the optical drive unit for an extra battery... or another HD/SSD.
>> leads cause a lot of damage to laptops in class
Not so likely with a Mac.
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"Second the rucksack notion. Cases that look like laptop cases are more likely to be pinched, whereas a rucksack is standard student kit..."
I agree; students at the college I am at (Goldsmiths, University of London, as a very mature student) tote all kinds of bags - never a standard identifiable "lap-top bag".
Some of them (myself included) use what is usually advertised as a "messenger bag"; I can get my laptop in it, but have never needed to actually do so - it's usually full of books and folders.
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Windows 8 with a touch screen sucks more than the suckiest piece of sucking carp you can imagine.
I bought my wife a Win8 with touchscreen laptop when she was bored thought she needed an upgrade. What a pile of pooh!
Win 7 with SSD OS drive will easily give everything required. Personally think you are better off with Office13 or 10 than the annual lease 365 too.
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Thanks for the tips so far guys and an extra virtual pint to NC for the perspective from the other side of the lectern.
Bit of mulling to be done. He's still got three more weeks before freshers so time to do the job properly.
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Just noticed that the prices seem to have gone up wildly in th last few weeks.
I got my son a Toshiba i5 with 4gb ram and 500gb hd for £399 a year ago and my Mum this one:
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BQ9I100/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
For £339 about 6 weeks ago astonishingly it is now £559
The Toshiba came with Windows 7 thank goodness.
Depending on the course your youngest is doing, I would recommend one with a numeric keyboard as it makes data entry easier.
It is also worth sticking with a fairly common brand so parts are easy to come by. My son stepped on his screen and cracked it. I sourced a replacement online for £40 and fitted it myself in about 2 hours (though the guide says it can be done in 15 minutes). There were no screews left over.
Alternatively I would consider getting accidental damage insurance because IMHO laptops are not as robust as PCs generally and the power socket goes which can be expensive to fix.
Just as an aside, laptop power cables seem to be getting thinner. The cable on my sons previous laptop, a Samsung, started to smoulder and then caught light. The shop we brought it from very quickly turned up and toook it away and gave us a full refund even though it was a year old.
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>> For £339 about 6 weeks ago astonishingly it is now £559
Probably because of the back to Uni/school requirement for laptops. Supply and demand and taking advantagE?
>> Depending on the course your youngest is doing, I would recommend one with a numeric keyboard
You might notice the OP said history and philosophy in his post :-)
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For Microsoft Office try here:
www.software4students.co.uk/t/brands/microsoft-office-2013-software
Got Office 2010 for £35 a couple of years back but it looks like it has gone up a bit recently.
All legitimate stuff.
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Can anyone tell me why they'd pay for Microsoft Office when Open Office or Libre are available free?
Unless it can do something the others can't?
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Regularly switching documents, at least spreadsheets, between MS Office and the other two messes with formatting and macros.
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>Can anyone tell me why they'd pay for Microsoft Office when Open Office or Libre are available free?
Because it is industry standard. Many employers use it so will ask if you are proficient. It is easy to use.
It guarantees compatibility and comes with support and regular updates.
My son’s uni insists assignments are in MS Word Format. Some free software used by other students save to the MS format but there were formatting error when opened by the markers and they lost marks. The uni is very specific as to format; words and lines need to be double spaced, headers, footers on each page etc.
Also any Macro designed in MS Office will not run on the free software.
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>> Also any Macro designed in MS Office will not run on the free software.
*Some* macros wil not run. The trouble with the free software formatting errors when saving to Word, is that you never know till you open them in Word. By then its too late.
MS software is cheap enough when using the educational discount.
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>> Windows 8 with a touch screen sucks more than the suckiest piece of sucking carp
>> you can imagine.
I'm being asked why Win8 touch screen is carp.
I've suggested that it's not intuitive, difficult to switch to from conventional windows and an all round poor experience compared to Apple or Android plus the possibility of issues with touch screen itself. It's also v1 of a new iteration of Windows and like 95 or Vista needs more work to get it right.
None of that however is answering his want for latest stuff or VFM issue about cost of 'office' spec compared to the bog standard 15.6" 'consumer' offerings he's just seen in PC World.
Can anybody clarify why W8 is so poor?.
He'll get Office 10 as we have a multi-user education licence version. I prefer 2003 myself though as we use it at work.
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>> Can anybody clarify why W8 is so poor?.
You just have. Ask him why sales of windows 8 have bombed and the CEO of MS responsible for it has been asked to leave. None of his contemporaries will have Win 8 and touch screen because its deeply uncool. He will be the stand out as the nerdie newb with the wrong gear and everyone will laugh at him.
He is he paying for it? If not tell him to be grateful for what he is getting.
Last edited by: VxFan on Mon 9 Sep 13 at 00:54
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>> He is he paying for it? If not tell him to be grateful for what
>> he is getting.
There's some money my Mother gave to them when they were much younger expressly to be used for this sort of thing so in effect yes, he's paying. If he ignores advice and gets what HE wants then it's on his own head.
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I would go for a relatively cheap one and save the remainder towards a replacement when it goes wrong.
Also have a think about backup solutions. Mine has a uni account for backups but for a total restore a.small portable harddrive may be a good idea? Typed on a phone so sorry for any typos.
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>>Can anybody clarify why W8 is so poor?
Because its not really a touch screen interface. It is more or less a single touch screen put in front of all the other stuff which essentially still exists and is usually easier with a mouse.
Take him to Curries or PC World or something and get him to play with one for 10 minutes.
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>> Can anybody clarify why W8 is so poor?.
>>
I think the others have given you the answer. From my own point of view the touch screens work if you have one of the laptops with a detachable screen which is then used as a tablet otherwise you will not really sit hunched over a laptop for 8+ hours/day using a touch screen when you have a perfectly serviceable keyboard and mouse pad right in front of you.
Win8 touch screen falls into the solutions looking for a problem to address so frequently referenced in the Motoring section here.
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The Lenovos are well specc'd and have a reputation for solid build quality but are a bit too pricey if taken with an 'office' sized screen.
I think one or the other of these two may fit the bill:
tinyurl.com/p65vscd (HP)
tinyurl.com/oy8baw2 (Toshiba).
I've used Misco in past for work stuff and tfound them fast and efficient. They're still an official supplier to our IT team. They also have advantage of a store 40 mins away in Wellyboro'.
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>> The Lenovos are well specc'd and have a reputation for solid build quality but are
>> a bit too pricey if taken with an 'office' sized screen.
>>
>> I think one or the other of these two may fit the bill:
>>
>> tinyurl.com/p65vscd (HP)
>>
>> tinyurl.com/oy8baw2 (Toshiba).
>>
>> I've used Misco in past for work stuff and tfound them fast and efficient. They're
>> still an official supplier to our IT team. They also have advantage of a store
>> 40 mins away in Wellyboro'.
You must be a civil service buyer. Here is a *better* specified Lenovo with a bigger screen thats cheaper than your HP, and similar spec but still cheaper than the tosh (HP are appallingly unreliable and Misco are renown for being expensive)
www.dabs.com/products/lenovo-edge-e530c-intel-core-i3-2348m-4gb-500gb-dual-os-8XQZ.html?fb=600&src=2
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 9 Sep 13 at 18:18
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Are they touch screen? (Bromps and Zero's) - that was on the original wishlist
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>> Are they touch screen? (Bromps and Zero's) - that was on the original wishlist
Only in The Lad's mind. My scepticism of touch was part of the rationale for the OP.
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I've had an E530 Thinkpad 'Edge' for several months, with a 2.2Ghz 2328M rather than the 2.3Ghz 2348M. Also has a 500GB HDD and Win 7 Pro. I upped the memory to 8GB, I think the extra 4GB module cost £15.
I've been very pleased with it - the battery lasted through a 3 hour meeting on Friday (I don't use permanently plugged in - if I'm using it while charging, when the battery gets to 100%, I go onto battery - I have formed the opinion that running them plugged in knackers the battery).
It has one idiosyncrasy, which is that the fan sometimes hunts - although it's quiet, when there is no other noise the rising and falling pitch is noticeable and used to irritate me. Either it's stopped, or I don't notice it any more.
Although it's probably more 'consumer' in build under the skin than the expensive Thinkpads, the keyboard is solid, the screen is matt rather than glossy (good in my book), and it works well - apart from the fact that I never did get the wireless to work properly with my TalkTalk D-Link DSL-2780 router. It's never been a problem with wireless elsewhere.
Look into the extended warranty - I got 3 years on site next business day for about £60, and £50 cashback for buying it so it would have been rude not to. Currently it's £78 on DABS but might still be worth having at that price. Of course it won't cover loss, theft, damage etc.
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>> if I'm using it while charging, when the battery gets to 100%, I go onto battery -
>> I have formed the opinion that running them plugged in knackers the battery).
That used to be true in the days of Ni-Cd batteries, but is no longer so - certainly with Li-Ion.
About 4 years ago I got two identical laptops: one each for my daughters.
One remembered the "always run down the battery" rule from the days of me going on about it with the batteries we were using years previously, the other didn't and left the laptop (nearly) always plugged in. Both laptops are used a lot.
The battery in the fully cycled one has been completely useless for a long time, the other still had 22% capacity when I reinstalled/rebuilt it a few weeks ago.
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Letting a Li-ion battery fully discharge often is not a good idea for battery life. But I think leaving them plugged in all the time also has an impact... my work laptop before this one wouldn't hold much charge and it thought it had fully charged in no time at all.
Maybe a balance in the middle... run down a bit but nowhere near empty and then charge it back up.
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Having recently got into the iDevice world I have done a small amount of research on the subject of battery life.
Apple's advice is to fully discharge the battery once a month and then to fully recharge it without interruption.
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That will help the phone calibrate empty-full.... but discharging until any device is flat is not good from a user perspective.... you'll need to use it at that point. It's Sod's law.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Tue 10 Sep 13 at 17:41
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Thanks Z but it's a 15.6" consumer widescreen - really a bit too big for lecture theatres or, for that matter (grrr), on trains. Now why mfrs can make a 15.6 screen so much cheaper than a 14 is another question.
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You sure about that Bromp? Firstly he's not going to be commuting on trains in rush hour (I assume) which is when the space restrictions might apply.
Secondly, I don't really think the difference between the two screen sizes makes a lecture theatre convenient or not.
And lastly perhaps he'll get more use out of it if the screen is larger lending itself to media.
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One thing I know with my work laptop is I preferred the previous non-widescreen one for working on document. The screen isn't tall enough... fine for media etc but when working on Word documents etc. I'd prefer more screen real estate vertically, preferably with higher resolution as well. Mine is about 13.3" diagonally.
Which is why working from home I RDP to it from the Mac to use a larger screen.
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For a Uni laptop then keyboard quality and ergonomics would be pretty close to the top of my list of "wants". Tell him to test drive laptop keyboards before making a final choice and buy a full size USB keyboard for serious work.
I have a Samsung series 5 at home and Mrs K has a Toshiba, neither of them come close to my work supplied Lenovo for ease of typing.
Windows 8?!
My Sammy came with Windows 8 which is an abomination. Who the hell wants to be reaching out to swipe or tap the screen when you have a mouse? I've installed 3rd party utilities to get back to classic behaviour. There are also serious security and privacy concerns with Windows 8. My employer will not allow Win 8 devices to connect to our internal network or hold company data. The German Govt. also has concerns.
www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/23/nsa_germany_windows_8/
Your son might also get upset if the DRM in Win 8 suddenly decides that his ripped media files are illegal.
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Definitely agree with the buying of a proper keyboard and mouse for home use. I hate laptops, ergonomic disasters. When I am back at home and using a laptop for prolonged periods, it is so much easier to plug in a keyboard and mouse, also I raise the whole laptop up to the height you would have a normal monitor. I used a pile of magazines to start with then I discovered an upturned plastic storage box was a perfect height! It makes a huge difference.
Last edited by: MJW1994 on Tue 10 Sep 13 at 21:05
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>> Definitely agree with the buying of a proper keyboard and mouse for home use. I hate >>laptops, ergonomic disasters.
Spot on.
I've done a bit of desktop H&S assessment stuff at work and a laptop doesn't get past first base for use in the office. Ideally either a docking station or other proper KVM connection is needed though stand plus USB mouse/keyboard will pass with careful adjustment.
Daughter was set up with a wireless desktop and stand from day one at her workstation in Halls.
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Horses for courses - I spend approx 8 hours a day working on my laptop (Dell Vostro, 12" screen) , and have no desire to use a separate keyboard.
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>> Horses for courses - I spend approx 8 hours a day working on my laptop
>> (Dell Vostro, 12" screen) , and have no desire to use a separate keyboard.
You might wish you had in a few years when RSI kicks in ;-P
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You might be right of course, although I've been working laptop-only for over 7 years now; ok so far...
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Laptop for Uni - rtj70
