Best laptop for pharmacy student?

[Pharmypharm]

I will be a P1 next month and am required to have a laptop for exams and such. What are your solid recommendations? I have used an HP the past few years but, the fan noise has become so loud over time its obnoxious now.

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[Apples2Oranges]

Depends on your preferences and the compatibility of software programs your school requires. I use a 2013 MacBook pro I got during my undergrad, and it has worked fine. My goal is to keep it for the rest of pharmacy school.

 

[egyptianmau121]

A lot of people in my class have a surface pro and they all swear that it's the best. You can draw on your screen when you need to take notes which makes it really convenient. I actually just got mine today!


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[Momus]

This has been discussed in the past.

Go with SSD drive for performance (15 seconds boot time), minimum 8GB RAM, 1080p screen, any i5 processor. You should be able to get a 2 in 1 laptop around <$500. Normally, a laptop this price range will weigh 3-4lbs. Try to avoid Apple products since it will cost 2-3x with the same hardware... unless ofc you are a die hard apple fan boy, and like to buy brand.

Regarding fan issues, I'm guessing your old laptop has a bigger die chips processor (not skylake or kabyLake). Skylake or kabyLake is much much more efficient since they are so small (14nm), it means it doesn't generate a lot of heat. As long as you get a i5-6000 series skylake or i5-7000 series kabylake processor, you will not have any noisy fan issue.

 

[smercer]

This has been discussed in the past.

Go with SSD drive for performance (15 seconds boot time), minimum 8GB RAM, 1080p screen, any i5 processor. You should be able to get a 2 in 1 laptop around <$500. Normally, a laptop this price range will weigh 3-4lbs. Try to avoid Apple products since it will cost 2-3x with the same hardware... unless ofc you are a die hard apple fan boy, and like to buy brand.

Regarding fan issues, I'm guessing your old laptop has a bigger die chips processor (not skylake or kabyLake). Skylake or kabyLake is much much more efficient since they are so small (14nm), it means it doesn't generate a lot of heat. As long as you get a i5-6000 series skylake or i5-7000 series kabylake processor, you will not have any noisy fan issue.

As stated, I would avoid Apple mostly just because of excess cost for what you need and possible software compatibility. Yes the school will do something for it, but it is always a pain to have to deal with a program not working simply due to incompatibility. Also, avoid HP products, as the company is just garbage now and even their printers are crap compared to Brother and Epson. I would look for the above features, most important being light weight, low heat production, and good battery life. Others pointed out the benefits of some of the 2-in-1s, but that really is personal preference. Just remember that you are buying this to take notes and tests on, not game or do anything excessive, so do not go out and blow 1k+ for no reason.

 

[Momus]

A lot of people in my class have a surface pro and they all swear that it's the best. You can draw on your screen when you need to take notes which makes it really convenient. I actually just got mine today!

Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

Surface Pro is fine also but be prepared to pay 2-3X just like Apple products.

These are my recommended laptops, 2 in 1, touchscreen - you can convert to tablet, cost about 1/3 of Apple or Surface Pro with the same hardware. It's heavier by 1-2 lb. The laptop below met my minimum requirement for a laptop 254 GB Solid State Drive, dual core processor at least above 2 Ghz, 8 GB RAM. Touchscreen/ tablet convertible is a bonus.

Asus ZenBook Flip Signature Edition 13.3" Laptop: m3-6Y30, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD $479 + Free Shipping

Lenovo Flex 5 14" Touch Laptop: i5-7200U, 1080p, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SSD $555 w/ VISA Checkout + Free S&H

 

[Amphetamine Salts]

just get any type of compact laptop. i rarely used a laptop during classes. i just printed out notes and brought pen and paper

 

[sosoo]

you'll want a laptop with 2.5ghz minimum. and if u have money, add more RAM and SSD. and if u can afford more, just get a gaming laptop. / also make sure your school doesn't also force u to buy a laptop directly from them... i had to pay $2,500 for the school's "pitiful" laptop even though i had my own. it was really a big scam for med students as well.

 

[Momus]

you'll want a laptop with 2.5ghz minimum. and if u have money, add more RAM and SSD. and if u can afford more, just get a gaming laptop. / also make sure your school doesn't also force u to buy a laptop directly from them... i had to pay $2,500 for the school's "pitiful" laptop even though i had my own. it was really a big scam for med students as well.

I would not recommend getting a gaming laptop. You need to keep your grades up; you will barely have the time to play. If you are a heavy gamer (game 2+ hours a day with high to ultra setting at 1080p resolution) and you don't mind toting 8 lb brick, then you can get one for $900-2000 ($300-500 in graphics card cost alone). It's costly and heavy; gaming laptop weighs around 6 lb minimum to 8 lb+. Save your back and bank, an ultrabook like the one I recommend above weighs less than 3-4lb.

 

[Thankyou2017]

Hold your thought for a moment and hear some life painful story....

In the history of pre-Roseman University in Nevada, formerly known as USN, we as students were forced to take school bought Laptop.

Let me give you more info,
Some students even got permission from the Head of IT to not take the school mandated laptop but later on, a different powerful figure, the Admission Head forced the students to take the laptop. This event had 2 different decisions from 2 different Heads of 2 different departments. This was a long lasting mind puzzling life experience to live through. You have to be there to feel the puzzle and the sting of overpriced laptop. The laptop was charged to students at $1200 for a comparable laptop that we could buy for $400 dollars. The sting lives years later, especially when the students already proved to the school that a laptop was already bought with much higher power and faster, fully equipped with Office software, and serviced by the student who was computer repair technician.

Still had to take that overpriced laptop.

So, hold your plan, get confirmation in writing from school that school will not force you to take school's laptop, then shop.

Sharing is caring...

 

[Lnsean]

surface pro.

/end thread

 

[lord999]

I would not recommend getting a gaming laptop. You need to keep your grades up; you will barely have the time to play. If you are a heavy gamer (game 2+ hours a day with high to ultra setting at 1080p resolution) and you don't mind toting 8 lb brick, then you can get one for $900-2000 ($300-500 in graphics card cost alone). It's costly and heavy; gaming laptop weighs around 6 lb minimum to 8 lb+. Save your back and bank, an ultrabook like the one I recommend above weighs less than 3-4lb.

No Razer Blade (my VA GFE laptop at taxpayers' expense) recommendation (need the graphics card for E/R Studio)? The Blade is light, power friendly, and can stand 80-100% continual workloads processing anything from hardcore data mining in FORTRAN/R to E/R projections. I just replaced the laptop from the 2013 model to the 2017 (I could have kept the 2013 model alive even longer except for the decertification from the NIST lists), which was a long time by government enterprise standards. It's also not terribly expensive at $1300 (yes, you can buy the $400 laptop, but depending on your class load, you might want a smoother experience. It makes for a fine gaming machine, but it really has an important niche as a cracker's (the black hat work, not the pejorative) machine of choice.

If you need a touchscreen, echo the the Surface Pro recommendation. I'd only get a Mac under very specific circumstances, most of the EHR interfaces in Apple are not terribly good. The other "normal" desktop that retails around $600-$800 that I really recommend is the Dell XPS 13 with the nostril facing camera.

The only buying recommendation would be to not buy it from a traditional retail outlet like Best Buy or Staples. They cheap out the parts for everything else than the spec. Fry's and Micro Center do better about it, and Newegg and Amazon would be where I would buy as a private person. CDW would be where I would buy enterprise stuff.

 

[Momus]

No Razer Blade (my VA GFE laptop at taxpayers' expense) recommendation (need the graphics card for E/R Studio)? The Blade is light, power friendly, and can stand 80-100% continual workloads processing anything from hardcore data mining in FORTRAN/R to E/R projections. I just replaced the laptop from the 2013 model to the 2017 (I could have kept the 2013 model alive even longer except for the decertification from the NIST lists), which was a long time by government enterprise standards. It's also not terribly expensive at $1300 (yes, you can buy the $400 laptop, but depending on your class load, you might want a smoother experience. It makes for a fine gaming machine, but it really has an important niche as a cracker's (the black hat work, not the pejorative) machine of choice.

If you need a touchscreen, echo the the Surface Pro recommendation. I'd only get a Mac under very specific circumstances, most of the EHR interfaces in Apple are not terribly good. The other "normal" desktop that retails around $600-$800 that I really recommend is the Dell XPS 13 with the nostril facing camera.

The only buying recommendation would be to not buy it from a traditional retail outlet like Best Buy or Staples. They cheap out the parts for everything else than the spec. Fry's and Micro Center do better about it, and Newegg and Amazon would be where I would buy as a private person. CDW would be where I would buy enterprise stuff.

There is no school program that a $400 dual core laptop with SSD can't run. Contrary to your belief, any where you get the laptop, as long as it is the same brand, it's built from the same factory.

If you want a gaming laptop, this is a good one vs. buying an overpriced blade or whatever you wanna call it. Acer Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop: i7-7700HQ, 16GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, GTX 1060 $900 + Free Shipping Seriously, compare the specs to your blade. This will give you a run for the money in terms of performance for $400 less.

 

[lord999]

There is no school program that a $400 dual core laptop with SSD can't run. Contrary to your belief, any where you get the laptop, as long as it is the same brand, it's built from the same factory.

If you want a gaming laptop, this is a good one vs. buying an overpriced blade or whatever you wanna call it. Acer Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop: i7-7700HQ, 16GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, GTX 1060 $900 + Free Shipping Seriously, compare the specs to your blade. This will give you a run for the money in terms of performance for $400 less.

I completely agree that a $400 laptop will do the utility work, but depending on what they do, they might something as an end all. I find that buying higher quality offsets the quantity purchases needed with cheaper laptops over time.

Yes, if you get the exact same model number (and subnumber). But between sales channels, this really is not the case except for the very high end models. What you figure out is that the same manufacturer and same general model (so let's take your example from Staples above).

That's the Staple's model number for the Lenovo Flex 5:
80XA0000US

This is the one for Amazon:
80VE000EUS
Amazon product ASIN B06XGLC9JJ
I assure you that even though this is the same manufacturer and the same general model, you will notice differences in the internal parts. From the motherboards to the sinks, you can get the same number specs with cheaper parts that don't have the same tolerances as the review models. You are better off buying the one that is closest to the review model down to the same submodel number to be sure. Dell general models that are sold in Best Buy are given much cheaper parts than the ones that the Dell OEM sells.[

But to another point, yeah, certainly, there are really only 4 real OEMs (and I'm personally partial to Asus/Asustek) and they are all neighbors in Taiwan and the mainland.

And, those Acers are total crap in terms of heat sink and motherboard coordination (from fellow experience). Watching my fellow colleagues at the bestest LAN party in the US (PDXLan) as I write this, we have all the great specs in the same room to run head to head, and to know the plans of the advanced hardware (work reason I'm here is to deal with the new supercomputer setup for Summit). Wishing you were here to get the nice NVidia stuff! I'm definitely sticking with the Razer's engineering.

And yes, more fun than QuakeCon.

 

[Momus]

I completely agree that a $400 laptop will do the utility work, but depending on what they do, they might something as an end all. I find that buying higher quality offsets the quantity purchases needed with cheaper laptops over time.

Yes, if you get the exact same model number (and subnumber). But between sales channels, this really is not the case except for the very high end models. What you figure out is that the same manufacturer and same general model (so let's take your example from Staples above).

That's the Staple's model number for the Lenovo Flex 5:
80XA0000US

This is the one for Amazon:
80VE000EUS
Amazon product ASIN B06XGLC9JJ
I assure you that even though this is the same manufacturer and the same general model, you will notice differences in the internal parts. From the motherboards to the sinks, you can get the same number specs with cheaper parts that don't have the same tolerances as the review models. You are better off buying the one that is closest to the review model down to the same submodel number to be sure. Dell general models that are sold in Best Buy are given much cheaper parts than the ones that the Dell OEM sells.[

But to another point, yeah, certainly, there are really only 4 real OEMs (and I'm personally partial to Asus/Asustek) and they are all neighbors in Taiwan and the mainland.

And, those Acers are total crap in terms of heat sink and motherboard coordination (from fellow experience). Watching my fellow colleaguesView attachment 221767 at the bestest LAN party in the US (PDXLan) as I write this, we have all the great specs in the same room to run head to head, and to know the plans of the advanced hardware (work reason I'm here is to deal with the new supercomputer setup for Summit). Wishing you were here to get the nice NVidia stuff! I'm definitely sticking with the Razer's engineering.

And yes, more fun than QuakeCon.

It's implied if you get a different model number, you will get a different hardware. They aren't trying to trick you. They are simply a different built.

The difference in performance is miniscule as long as the listed specs are the same. In fact, it is possible the cheaper model might out bench the the pricier variety. It's like buying one 8GB Corsair 2400mhz RAM, another 8GB Crucial 2400mhz RAM, you can't tell a difference in day to day use. It might have a slight difference in benchmark. It's like using pcpartpicker.com and get all same hardware but different brand, they will perform the same, with different cost. Given those two examples, I will still buy the one from Staples and save myself $200 if I have to choose because I know they will perform about the same.

Just another thing to point out, the comparison you make, the model I listed is actually flex 5 (staple), not flex 4 (Amazon). Amazon version has a dedicated graphics card AMD radeon R7 m460 2GB, Staple has integrated graphics card HD 620. That's why it's a different model number, a different laptop. They aren't the same laptop. If it's the same model number, every parts will have the same manufacturer and specs. There is a certain exception to this rule, sometimes the company is too lazy to update their model number and some period of time has passed by (a year or two), they simply switch a part or two from another manufacturer but keep the same model number.

 

[smercer]

I would venture to say that if they were a gamer, they would already have a decent rig. Laptops are nice, but really, they just suck for gaming. They overheat (not necessarily shutdown, but get hot), are loud, have terrible battery life, and typically cost more than a desktop to have equal functionality. I would go with the cheap laptop and if they just want to game that badly, save up $1500-2k and get build a custom desktop. You can game at school, but online gaming sucks on wifi, especially on campus. If they want a gaming laptop that bad, then I would also custom build it, as you will get exactly what you want. I have not built any laptops, but have built several desktops from CyberPowerPC - UNLEASH THE POWER - Create the Custom Gaming PC and Laptop Computer of your dreams with good results. Of course they could also go to newegg or somewhere and buy parts to build it themselves.

 

[El Trombopag]

Yeesh, I was just going to suggest a mid range chromebook. Longest lasting battery, lightest weight.
Personally I've found myself more productive if I restrict my gaming to a dedicated console --keep a 'work computer' as a 'work computer'. Too easy for me to 'take breaks'.

 

[WVUPharm2007]

What happened to just printing off the powerpoints and writing on them? People actually lug $1200 Surface tablets to school and take clunky ass notes on them?

lol.

 

[smercer]

What happened to just printing off the powerpoints and writing on them? People actually lug $1200 Surface tablets to school and take clunky ass notes on them?

lol.

At my school all exams were through a computer based program, so you had to have a functional laptop at minimum. Also printing off 100-200 slides for each weekly exam adds up quick in ink cost, even in just black and white. I definitely agree spending 1k+ on something to take notes/exams on would be excessive.

 

[WVUPharm2007]

At my school all exams were through a computer based program, so you had to have a functional laptop at minimum. Also printing off 100-200 slides for each weekly exam adds up quick in ink cost, even in just black and white. I definitely agree spending 1k+ on something to take notes/exams on would be excessive.

You can make it so there are like 8 slides per page. Most lectures were like 8 pages or so at most.

And we wonder why student loan balances are so high. Maybe if they didn't make their students waste so much money on unnecessary bull****, costs wouldn't be so high.

 

[angelsplight]

Depends on what you need the laptop for. One of my roommates has a big alienware gaming laptop cause well, he uses it for games also at home and can't bring his desktop. I on the other hand, use a cheap Acer Aspire laptop which is enough for me to take notes, watch movies and do my exams since I have a desktop with me. Some people like tablets like surface but my schools Examsoft isn't too...happy about exams being on it (Gives lots of problems).

 

[cakezyum]

Macbook pro retina 2015 before the port crisis.

 

[Momus]

CyberPowerPC Tracer II 15 VR Laptop: i7-7700HQ, 16GB DDR4, 240GB SSD, GTX 1060 $866 + Free Shipping

Wow, what a great deal, cheap cheap cheap for the 1060 GTX. I am even tempted to sell my perfectly capable laptop i5-6200u, 8GB RAM, 250 GB SSD, <4lb, backlit keyboard, touchscreen ultrabook 2 in 1, I bought for $400 last year. I game occasionally and I haven't bought a desktop yet. This will be a nice one to game at 1080p resolution. Weight wouldn't be a problem since I rarely tote my laptop around (once every 4 months if that... ).

Decision, decision...