Advice for those looking to buy a laptop for Med School

[Verite]

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Hi Everyone,

If you are planning to buy a lap top for medical school, I'd recommend getting a Dell or Gateway.

For REALLY good prices on these two brands, check http://www.slickdeals.net/ regularly.

This site will let you know of any "good to buy" deals from these two companies, in fact, there's a nice Dell Laptop P4-2GHz Laptop (plus DVD or CDRW and 2nd Battery) for $674 right now.

I am going to wait until the end of this month to purchase my laptop...

Oh yeah, if you've never bought one before, buy a LIGHT (~5 or 6 lbs max) lap top or you'd be sorry when you start bringing it around with you everywhere 😀

Good luck.

- Verite

 

[DarkChild]

whoa!!!!
tell that duckie to slow down.
where's he runnin so fast 😕

 

[Fizz]

Hi Verite -

I totally agree! I bought a Dell a few weeks ago for medical school and I love it! There are some great rebate offers and things now!

 

[Allygator89]

I actually bought mine from dell saturday using slickdeals and with all the add on's, it still was less than 900.

 

[moops]

what kind of options? i am looking at getting my first lap top for med school, i want somethign cool that i can watch movies on (dvd)... that's about it really, what's the best one you woudl recommend buying?

tanku! also, you can hook them up to bigger monitors too right?

 

[Mike59]

Thanks for the link.

I think I'm just going to lug my old comp to med school until I get a better feel for whether to go notebook or desktop. Most med students seem to advise people to get a desktop as notebooks are hardly ever needed in the classroom or lab.

But for those who missed it, here's a link to a discussion that went on awhile back:

Desktop vs. Notebook discussion

 

[Doctor&Geek]

Boo

I trust the forums of:

www.fatwallet.com
forums.anandtech.com

The best bang for buck laptops are Pentium 4M processors. Those are light as well as fast, and can be found for about $1100 the last time I checked.

Best of luck!

 

[moops]

how much is wireless ethernet cost?


*does* even

 

[tBw]

Don't forget that some med schools (UCSD jumps to mind as one) actually have 'minimum' specs stated on their web site so take a look at these before buying to make sure you will have what you need.

Also, and someone correct me if this is wrong - don't some schools *give* you a laptop (Case??) Maybe I'm hallucinating on that one but I'm sure I remember someone saying that last year....

 

[Chronotropic]

I would recommend a Toshiba or IBM laptop. They seem to be the most hassel free. You don't want to spend time in med school trying to fix your laptop.

moops a wireless card is about $80 at best buy. You could probably find one cheaper off the net.

 

[Allygator89]

Originally posted by moops
how much is wireless ethernet cost?


*does* even

I think I picked one up from Dell at $59. You could even buy them new on ebay for cheap.

 

[gtb]

I used a Dell laptop throughout my first year at medical school, but once I started loading various medical software (Griffith's 5-minute consult, Steadmans dictionary, UpToDate, etc.) things got very complicated. I ended up spending dozens of hours configuring computer to avoid crashing. Over the summer I got convinced by some MSIIIs to try an Apple Macintosh instead, mostly because our campus and hospital (UCHSC) are wired with the wireless Apple Airport network. I had an Airport card for the Dell, but couldn't get it to work. Anyway, I bought the G4 bigscreen laptop, used it throughout my second year and I'm pretty thrilled with the Macintosh. I've had no incompatibility problems, all of my medical software runs w/o crashing, and the wireless network actually works. Mostly, I don't spend hours trying to figure out what's wrong and why things aren't working.

I took out a computer loan through financial aid and had enough left over to buy an Ipod and a Sony PDA. Anyway, I was spending way too much time fumbling around with the PC so I tried an alternative.

Anything will work for you in school, but I'll never go back to a PC again. Just my two cents.

 

[Yogi Bear]

what's the school that uses mac's? i'd wanna avoid it.... j/k. 😀

 

[tBw]

Originally posted by Yogi Bear
what's the school that uses mac's? i'd wanna avoid it.... j/k. 😀

Cornell uses Macs in its PBL rooms. Yay MACS! 😉

 

[Iron Horse]

I've always used pcs, but am seriously considering going with a G4. Can anyone offer thoughts/advice on the G4? Pros/cons versus pcs and anything I should look to include on it if I do go with the G4?

 

[moops]

does wireless service usually cost extra? how much?

 

[Funshine0123]

Wright State is also all MAC's. They allow you to use an IBM compatible, but they only support and provide support for MAC's.

Does anyone know what MCO uses?

Also (I'll show my technological ignorance here), if I get a laptop with wireless, what does that mean if my school isn't wireless??

 

[Gleevec]

Originally posted by JPaikman
Boo

I trust the forums of:

www.fatwallet.com
forums.anandtech.com

The best bang for buck laptops are Pentium 4M processors. Those are light as well as fast, and can be found for about $1100 the last time I checked.

Best of luck!

Good links.

Also DONT buy Intel Centrino processors. They are based on the 802.11b standard which will soon be replaced by 802.11g (about 10-15 times faster). And since universities are the first to implement faster bandwidth technologies I can imagine most med centers will be on the new standard soon (btw, you CAN use 802.11g if you buy a seperate card on Centrino, its just you are paying the extra cost for a slower processor and internet connection).

Also Dell and Apple laptops tend to be overpriced. Look at Compaq, HP, Toshiba at your local Best Buy or CompUSA. The rebates are remarkable. I got 450 bucks off a Toshiba laptop in rebates alone, bringing the cost down to $850. A comprable Dell was around 1250 and a comprable Apple was around 1750.

 

[Yogi Bear]

Originally posted by Gleevec
Good links.

Also DONT buy Intel Centrino processors. They are based on the 802.11b standard which will soon be replaced by 802.11g (about 10-15 times faster). And since universities are the first to implement faster bandwidth technologies I can imagine most med centers will be on the new standard soon (btw, you CAN use 802.11g if you buy a seperate card on Centrino, its just you are paying the extra cost for a slower processor and internet connection).

Also Dell and Apple laptops tend to be overpriced. Look at Compaq, HP, Toshiba at your local Best Buy or CompUSA. The rebates are remarkable. I got 450 bucks off a Toshiba laptop in rebates alone, bringing the cost down to $850. A comprable Dell was around 1250 and a comprable Apple was around 1750.

toshiba laptop's are awesome! cheap and reliable. pc mag did an annual customer survey in which 10% of toshia laptops had to be returned to be fixed compared to dell's whopping 30 percent last year. if you look at the other thread, i also posted a link where dell recently had to fix the motherboards of 20k of its inspiron 2650 laptops cuz of defects. stay away from dell unless u can afford the extra $200 to cover extended warranty. instead, get a better-equipied toshiba and use the $200 to get urself a pda or a digital camera.