Best Laptop for Student

[Excelsius]

Why rule out Apple? They make great laptops and I'd rank them among the best suited and among the most popular machines for students these days. You can dual boot to Windows if you like so you can have the best of both worlds. Just curious.

I had never used Mac until about 1.5 years ago I got Macbook Pro through work. There are some things that are great about it and others that plainly suck. Some pros: it looks nice, I have never had any spyware or virus problems (though this is slowly changing), you can't get a laptop with Windows XP and Vista is really bad.

Now for the bad things

1. Many programs are just not available for Mac. I use Scientific Workplace that is designed for windows and won't run on mac. There are many other programs like that. There is also the issue of licenses. If you have a PC at home, then your Maple cannot be installed on your macbook. You have to choose - either PC or a laptop - and buy the appropriate software.
2. If you love music and listen to pure samples - lossless - there is no way for you to play them on Mac unless they are Apple lossless. I have over 10K music files on my PC in APE format and I am not about to convert them to Apple Lossless. There is one half decent player called Cog, but it is pretty bad. Now that I updated my OS to 10.5, I can't use it anymore.
3. The metal case gets easily damaged. I accidentally dropped it once from a short height and while the laptop works, the entire case is slightly bent.
4. The case easily gets scratched.
5. Sometimes I have issues waking the computer. Have to do a force shut down through the power button.
6. Many times when I switch from ethernet to wireless, the whole computer freezes. Again, I have to do a power button forced shut down.
7. Wireless networks often have a conflict when you have a wireless mac and wireless PC using the same internet
8. While Parallels is nice (this is the software that allows windows to run), it consumes a LOT of memory and speed. You better get at least 4GB of ram or it won't work right. Even with 4GBs, I find it hard to use applications simultaneous in Parallels and the Mac.
9. The battery barely lasts 1.5 hours under very light usage. If you turn on Parallels, you might as well plug in the powercord.
10. The calculation of the amount of time you have left for the battery is very inaccurate. After continuous, consistent usage, I find that the battery has suddenly decreased by about 50%.
11. You cannot use all the features of the new MS Office 2007. Macros are disabled in Mac. It also takes a while to open MS Office 2007 files on the Mac if you are only using the official converter.
12. It has no input for SD cards for easy data transfers, such as photos, videos, recordings, etc.
13. Sometimes the case gets so hot that you can't put it on your lap even if you are wearing clothing. I often run Einstein@Home on it and during those times you cannot even touch the metal for more than a second.
14. The power adapter failed recently - after only about a year of use. That's $100 down the drain.
15. Some of the MS Office files (2003 or 2007) created on PC do not display properly on the Mac, such as PowerPoint lecture notes or Excel graphs.
16. When you send an e-mail attachment without zipping it first, many PC users are unable to open the MS Office files.
17. The notebook is overpriced.
18. Entourage, which is the substitute for Outlook, has almost none of the features that Outlook has. And the e-mails that you send end up in different font sizes for Outlook users. This was very frustrating and has no solution. The letters are either very big or very small.

Anyway, I am not really happy with the mac, but overall, it works better than Vista. I am hoping that the new Windows 7 will be as good as XP. The most cost effective way to own a computer is to build a PC and then replace individual parts as they become old. You get to sell the old parts and buy ones with little loss to you. Let's hope we can start building laptops too. They are too nonstandard for now.

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[MilkmanAl]

Lenovo still offers XP "downgrades" with their laptops. They're the only ones I know of, though.

 

[BlackDr2b]

I have heard a fair amount of med students say that they like the Tablet PC. The school that I am really hoping to get in to uses these and the students there like them. They use the Toshiba one.

 

[Jolie South]

Lenovo still offers XP "downgrades" with their laptops. They're the only ones I know of, though.

For all the crap that people talk about vista, I haven't had any problems with it and dare I say, actually like it better than XP.

 

[THH]

For all the crap that people talk about vista, I haven't had any problems with it and dare I say, actually like it better than XP.

I agree entirely. Vista with SP1 installed is a solid setup.

 

[nick_carraway]

I had never used Mac until about 1.5 years ago I got Macbook Pro through work. There are some things that are great about it and others that plainly suck. Some pros: it looks nice, I have never had any spyware or virus problems (though this is slowly changing), you can't get a laptop with Windows XP and Vista is really bad.

Now for the bad things

1. Many programs are just not available for Mac. I use Scientific Workplace that is designed for windows and won't run on mac. There are many other programs like that. There is also the issue of licenses. If you have a PC at home, then your Maple cannot be installed on your macbook. You have to choose - either PC or a laptop - and buy the appropriate software.
2. If you love music and listen to pure samples - lossless - there is no way for you to play them on Mac unless they are Apple lossless. I have over 10K music files on my PC in APE format and I am not about to convert them to Apple Lossless. There is one half decent player called Cog, but it is pretty bad. Now that I updated my OS to 10.5, I can't use it anymore.
3. The metal case gets easily damaged. I accidentally dropped it once from a short height and while the laptop works, the entire case is slightly bent.
4. The case easily gets scratched.
5. Sometimes I have issues waking the computer. Have to do a force shut down through the power button.

For #5, see this link: http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/12/06/how-to-quickly-sleep-your-macbook

It might help with your issue, as it helped with mine and my girlfriend's.

 

[MilkmanAl]

I don't like Vista at all. XP treats me much better.

 

[Excelsius]

For all the crap that people talk about vista, I haven't had any problems with it and dare I say, actually like it better than XP.

Blasphemy! But maybe you use your laptop only for word processing, in which case Vista might be ok.

1. Vista Issues
2. Vista Issues
3. Sins of Vista

There is more where that came from.

 

[nick_carraway]

I agree entirely. Vista with SP1 installed is a solid setup.

I didn't know this until recently, but did you know that some hardware won't allow SP1 to auto-update? Creative drivers especially have issues with this.

Manual installation of the SP1 standalone will fail in the middle of the upgrade (a big problem).

 

[Excelsius]

[/list]
For #5, see this link: http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/12/06/how-to-quickly-sleep-your-macbook

It might help with your issue, as it helped with mine and my girlfriend's.

Thanks for the tip. But I do think "What if?" I'd rather have waking problems then lose my reports, which the article seems to suggest. The waking problem isn't consistently happening all the time yet. But I guess if I have a lot of issue between classes this quarter, then I might have to consider disabling this feature and relying on my own memory to save files before closing turning off the notebook.

 

[Excelsius]

I think if you are considering Winows, you should at least wait for Windows 7. The safest choice as of now: Windows 7 SP1. Even safer: Windows 8.

 

[nick_carraway]

Thanks for the tip. But I do think "What if?" I'd rather have waking problems then lose my reports, which the article seems to suggest. The waking problem isn't consistently happening all the time yet. But I guess if I have a lot of issue between classes this quarter, then I might have to consider disabling this feature and relying on my own memory to save files before closing turning off the notebook.

Yeah I don't leave my laptop on for extended periods with files open so it wasn't an issue for me.

Just be sure to wait for the sleep indicator flash to let you know it's saved and everything's dumped to memory before you move it. Drove me nuts every time I opened my bag to a non-responsive, super-heated laptop.

 

[THH]

Blasphemy! But maybe you use your laptop only for word processing, in which case Vista might be ok.

1. Vista Issues
2. Vista Issues
3. Sins of Vista

There is more where that came from.

That stuff is two years old. Since then, SP1 has fixed a large number of the original Vista problems.

 

[Jolie South]

That stuff is two years old. Since then, SP1 has fixed a large number of the original Vista problems.

Maybe that's what it is. I've had Vista for about 6 months now.

I'm also not an uber dork gamer or media professional and basically use my computer for student stuff (Office apps), internet, and watching videos.

 

[nick_carraway]

Maybe that's what it is. I've had Vista for about 6 months now.

I'm also not an uber dork gamer or media professional and basically use my computer for student stuff (Office apps), internet, and watching videos.

Uber dork gamer? Outrageous!

 

[Destro96]

Although Vista is stable now, the performance drag is unacceptable. It gets you nothing other than a pretty interface. The cost is your computer running 50% slower.

My Lenovo T61 w/ 4GB RAM was a PIG until I downgraded to XP.

If anyone is interested in Lenovo Employee Pricing, please PM me.

I have a friend whose father works for IBM.

He gave me a code to use (they are allowed to share it with friends and family). After I ordered, Lenvo sends me promotional e-mails with a generic public password for employee discount.

 

[nick_carraway]

Although Vista is stable now, the performance drag is unacceptable. It gets you nothing other than a pretty interface. The cost is your computer running 50% slower.

My Lenovo T61 w/ 4GB RAM was a PIG until I downgraded to XP.

If anyone is interested in Lenovo Employee Pricing, please PM me.

I have a friend whose father works for IBM.

He gave me a code to use (they are allowed to share it with friends and family). After I ordered, Lenvo sends me promotional e-mails with a generic public password for employee discount.

Aw that's nice of you.

I know that before, Vista had performance issues especially with games. After SP1, I haven't looked at any comparisons with XP SP3 although my games run well enough in Vista.

I certainly wouldn't be surprised if there still is a difference, though for most people it doesn't really matter.

Also, keep in mind that you reformatted to downgrade to XP. Things are always faster once you reformat.

 

[JackInTheBox]

Although Vista is stable now, the performance drag is unacceptable. It gets you nothing other than a pretty interface. The cost is your computer running 50% slower.

My Lenovo T61 w/ 4GB RAM was a PIG until I downgraded to XP.

I call bull****. There's no way Vista runs 50% slower than XP, especially on a system with 4 gigs of RAM (and I'm guessing a Core 2 Duo since it's a T61). If Vista was slow on your machine, you either screwed something up on your end, or you went cheap and stuck with the integrated Intel video chipset.

 

[Excelsius]

I call bull****. There's no way Vista runs 50% slower than XP, especially on a system with 4 gigs of RAM (and I'm guessing a Core 2 Duo since it's a T61). If Vista was slow on your machine, you either screwed something up on your end, or you went cheap and stuck with the integrated Intel video chipset.

Except that integrated intel chipset runs XP pretty well. Vista IS a drag and needing a separate video card only proves the point. And perhaps you have heard about that scandal where Intel purposely misled customers by claiming "Vista Ready" under the pressure of Microsoft, whereas that was not the case. Vista is a hog without significant improvements.

And downgrading a laptop is not so easy. I bought a Dell almost a year ago and removed Vista. It was very tough to come accross all the drivers compatible with XP, and in the end the laptop was crippled - couldn't find a compatible video driver, as a result, the laptop could not go into sleep mode or something like that. I returned that laptop and that was it.

 

[JackInTheBox]

Except that integrated intel chipset runs XP pretty well. Vista IS a drag and needing a separate video card only proves the point.

Vista only needs a separate video card if you want to run the Aero Glass interface. Turn all the effects off, and you have a functional system that'll run well enough on that turd of a chip. There's really no excuse for anybody to be running an integrated Intel video chip anyway. They're absolute crap. Any 3 year old GPU from AMD or NVIDIA will run circles around that waste of silicon.

And perhaps you have heard about that scandal where Intel purposely misled customers by claiming "Vista Ready" under the pressure of Microsoft, whereas that was not the case. Vista is a hog without significant improvements.

Yes I have heard about the Vista Ready scandal, except you got your facts wrong. Microsoft didn't pressure Intel. It was the other way around because Intel didn't have time to increase production on their newer chips and had to clear stock of the 915 chipset. Microsoft caved to Intel (probably one of the biggest forces in tech), and people got burned. That's not to excuse Microsoft for what they did, but not all of the problems with Vista were the fault of Vista. Most of the big issues, apart from increased system requirements, were the fault of lazy 3rd parties (i.e. companies not writing decent printer and video card drivers, resulting in incompatible peripherals and slow 3D performance).


Vista does use more system resources than XP, but the overall speed differences are not nearly as dramatic as people like to claim, especially if you're running any computer built in the past two years. There's no reason to be running anything less than 2 gigs of RAM when you can get that much memory for the cost of a dinner out. Once all the most recent updates to both OSes have been installed, Vista will perform about the same or often better than XP, even with only 1 GB of RAM:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3236

Vista gets bashed a lot, but I'd be willing to wager that if you skinned Vista and XP exactly the same, most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference in speed between the two in real-world use.

 

[THH]

Although Vista is stable now, the performance drag is unacceptable. It gets you nothing other than a pretty interface. The cost is your computer running 50% slower.

My Lenovo T61 w/ 4GB RAM was a PIG until I downgraded to XP.

If anyone is interested in Lenovo Employee Pricing, please PM me.

I have a friend whose father works for IBM.

He gave me a code to use (they are allowed to share it with friends and family). After I ordered, Lenvo sends me promotional e-mails with a generic public password for employee discount.

That figure is completely unfounded. In benchmarking tests, even the original retail Vista (w/o SP1) was only 1-5% slower in running demanding programs. For the normal user, it would be totally unnoticeable.
In other areas, such as video encoding, Vista is actually 10-20% faster. So it is all give and take.

 

[fxny12004]

Sorry, but you're wrong. A larger frame buffer can and will speed things up in certain cases, i.e. at higher resolutions or with high levels of anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering. Admittedly with a mobile part, you'll most likely run into other bottlenecks in the GPU before you run into memory bottlenecks, but saying that a larger frame buffer is worthless is wrong.

Actually, youre wrong, but im not here to point fingers
This is a very common train of thought – more video memory must mean better performance. This is not true – the video card itself matters much more than the memory it has.
A card with a limited 128-bit memory bus can only use ONLY UP TO 256mb ram. Only cards with a 256-bit bus or greater are going to be able to use more than 256MB of memory. There is no performance gain to justify the price if you have a card with a 128 bit memory bus that as 512 MB of RAM or even 1GB. This my friend is common sense in the GPU world. HENCE IF YOU BUY A CARD THAT CANNOT USE ALL OF ITS POTENTIAL RAM< YOU ARE BEING FOOLED <HENCE MY STATEMENT EARLIER...

one thing though however, a BIG misconception regarding video cards is the fact that they add dedicated memory (ram) in order to fool a person into thinking that more ram equals more power. That IS COMPLETELY WRONG!

Why can't it use more memory effectively you ask? Here's a primitive example. An office worker can use a maximum of three computers at a time. If he is given an additional three computers, is he any more productive? No, because he can only use three of them to begin with. The extra three do nothing.


Common sense...

 

[asakkings]

After lifetime of using PCs i bought a macbook last year by far the best new computer I could have gotten. Especially since there is parallels that allows me to run windows and mac simultaneously, beats getting vista.

 

[NotForTheMoney]

would anyone suggest a UMPC*the one from samsung* for school? somehow i find myself wanted that over a trad. laptop even though the specs would be alot better on a laptop for same or cheaper price. or maybe i just wanna be different?

 

[JackInTheBox]

Actually, youre wrong, but im not here to point fingers
This is a very common train of thought &#8211; more video memory must mean better performance. This is not true &#8211; the video card itself matters much more than the memory it has.
A card with a limited 128-bit memory bus can only use ONLY UP TO 256mb ram. Only cards with a 256-bit bus or greater are going to be able to use more than 256MB of memory. There is no performance gain to justify the price if you have a card with a 128 bit memory bus that as 512 MB of RAM or even 1GB. This my friend is common sense in the GPU world. HENCE IF YOU BUY A CARD THAT CANNOT USE ALL OF ITS POTENTIAL RAM< YOU ARE BEING FOOLED <HENCE MY STATEMENT EARLIER...

Where are you even getting the basis for your claim that a card with a 128 bit memory bus can only address 256 meg of RAM? That's not the way the memory bus works on video cards. The total bus is split into multiple 32 or 64 bit channels with a memory module for each channel. Total memory bandwidth depends on the size of the module, the width of the bus, and the frequency of the memory itself. You can very easily have memory with a 128 bit bus performing faster overall than memory on a 256 bit bus if the clock speed is high enough.

It is true that lower end cards don't benefit as much from additional memory, but your original blanket statement was that it was "completely wrong" to assume that more is better. Now you're adding the caveat that the video card matters more than the amount of memory. Almost every single midrange to enthusiast level card released now has at least a 256 bit bus. Cards with a 128 bit or lower memory bus are usually budget cards. Those cards are usually scaled down and have much slower clock speeds, so they're usually fill-rate or shader limited before they're memory bandwidth limited. That's why they don't benefit from more video memory, not because of your misunderstanding of memory bandwidth.

The DDR2 bus is only 64 bits wide, so you're telling me that a computer with DDR2 memory can't address the full amount of its memory? I guess all the performance increases people with >1 GB of memory have noticed must all be in their heads

 

[niranjan162]

would anyone suggest a UMPC*the one from samsung* for school? somehow i find myself wanted that over a trad. laptop even though the specs would be alot better on a laptop for same or cheaper price. or maybe i just wanna be different?

r u talkin about the nc10? if so i think you would be fine.

 

[nick_carraway]

Where are you even getting the basis for your claim that a card with a 128 bit memory bus can only address 256 meg of RAM? That's not the way the memory bus works on video cards. The total bus is split into multiple 32 or 64 bit channels with a memory module for each channel. Total memory bandwidth depends on the size of the module, the width of the bus, and the frequency of the memory itself. You can very easily have memory with a 128 bit bus performing faster overall than memory on a 256 bit bus if the clock speed is high enough.

...

The DDR2 bus is only 64 bits wide, so you're telling me that a computer with DDR2 memory can't address the full amount of its memory? I guess all the performance increases people with >1 GB of memory have noticed must all be in their heads

Agreed. This is like saying the 8800 GTS 320 MB is equivalent in all situations with the 8800 GTS 640 MB. It simply isn't true. The architecture of both cards is identical except for the increased memory.

When larger screen sizes come into play or for larger textures, the 640 MB performs much better than the bottle-necked 320 MB. Using your "facts", the 640 MB should perform equally as well/poorly since it has a 320-bit bus too.

 

[Kaustikos]

Except that integrated intel chipset runs XP pretty well. Vista IS a drag and needing a separate video card only proves the point. And perhaps you have heard about that scandal where Intel purposely misled customers by claiming "Vista Ready" under the pressure of Microsoft, whereas that was not the case. Vista is a hog without significant improvements.

And downgrading a laptop is not so easy. I bought a Dell almost a year ago and removed Vista. It was very tough to come accross all the drivers compatible with XP, and in the end the laptop was crippled - couldn't find a compatible video driver, as a result, the laptop could not go into sleep mode or something like that. I returned that laptop and that was it.

I think that's what ruined Vista. It wasn't ready to be released because NO ONE was ready for. Not even games. Vista came too early, imo. Windows 7, from what I gather, is pretty much when Vista should have been released. Considering the majority of the population wasn't ready, nor were their computers ready, for Vista; MS shouldn't have pushed it so early. I won't say Vista is bad, as MS has tried so hard to fix all the issues it has, but I will say that it was released at the wrong time.
In any case, I'm eagerly awaiting 7 and am actually getting the beta right now to try it out.

in any case, why is no one discussing netbooks for med school needs? I already have a very nice PC to handle all the major hassles and would strongly encourage people to start looking into netbooks for portably computing.

 

[johnniewalker11]

.

 

[Datdoctor]

I got a Dell this summer but I forget the model number. They have some good sales. I ended up paying around 700 for a computer that retailed for about 1100.

 

[fxny12004]

Where are you even getting the basis for your claim that a card with a 128 bit memory bus can only address 256 meg of RAM? That's not the way the memory bus works on video cards. The total bus is split into multiple 32 or 64 bit channels with a memory module for each channel. Total memory bandwidth depends on the size of the module, the width of the bus, and the frequency of the memory itself. You can very easily have memory with a 128 bit bus performing faster overall than memory on a 256 bit bus if the clock speed is high enough.

It is true that lower end cards don't benefit as much from additional memory, but your original blanket statement was that it was "completely wrong" to assume that more is better. Now you're adding the caveat that the video card matters more than the amount of memory. Almost every single midrange to enthusiast level card released now has at least a 256 bit bus. Cards with a 128 bit or lower memory bus are usually budget cards. Those cards are usually scaled down and have much slower clock speeds, so they're usually fill-rate or shader limited before they're memory bandwidth limited. That's why they don't benefit from more video memory, not because of your misunderstanding of memory bandwidth.

The DDR2 bus is only 64 bits wide, so you're telling me that a computer with DDR2 memory can't address the full amount of its memory? I guess all the performance increases people with >1 GB of memory have noticed must all be in their heads

We can go on about whos right or wrong, and we obviously have a difference in opinion. So, without further ado, i agree to disagree.

btw man, I love you! No hard feelings

 

[wurm]

My first choice would be a Macbook Pro. My second choice would be a Macbook. Since you don't like apple, I would choose Lenovo or IBM.

Do med students really need the macbook pro? I was told that was more for people into graphic design.

 

[Siverhideo1985]

I'm thinking of getting a netbook (hp, samsung or asus) because all I do with my computer is
a) surf the internet
b) watch videos (avi files mostly....no not illegal ones...tsk tsk)
c) word processing

that should all be possible right? Plus I like the idea of being able to carry it everywhere (class, library, trips)...but all the other ultraportable laptops with better hardware are way expensive.

 

[nick_carraway]

Do med students really need the macbook pro? I was told that was more for people into graphic design.

It's for people who utilize the graphics capability of their machine by gaming, watching 1080 video, video editing & rendering, etc.

I would be surprised if a graphic designer NEEDS a Macbook Pro or if DJs even NEED them, even though it's impossible to find one who doesn't use one.

The MBP used to have broader appeal until this new revision of the upper end of the Macbook line, in which some of the advantages were mitigated.

 

[nick_carraway]

I'm thinking of getting a netbook (hp, samsung or asus) because all I do with my computer is
a) surf the internet
b) watch videos (avi files mostly....no not illegal ones...tsk tsk)
c) word processing

that should all be possible right? Plus I like the idea of being able to carry it everywhere (class, library, trips)...but all the other ultraportable laptops with better hardware are way expensive.

What AVIs are there to watch besides illegal ones?

That said, the Sony P looks amazing at CES. It's pretty expensive, but what isn't from Sony?

 

[Rebs28]

I'd like to know how Lenovo compares to Dell/HP/etc on tech support. Anyone?

 

[JackInTheBox]

I'd like to know how Lenovo compares to Dell/HP/etc on tech support. Anyone?

For one thing, it's based in Atlanta, Georgia.

 

[Siverhideo1985]

What AVIs are there to watch besides illegal ones?

That said, the Sony P looks amazing at CES. It's pretty expensive, but what isn't from Sony?

Mostly home video's of my two kids and wife. Some of my dog Chaps, but he is too young to know that the camcorder isn't a toy and tries to chew on it as soon as I start to take a movie oh him.

When's the Sony P due?

 

[nick_carraway]

Mostly home video's of my two kids and wife. Some of my dog Chaps, but he is too young to know that the camcorder isn't a toy and tries to chew on it as soon as I start to take a movie oh him.

When's the Sony P due?

Supposedly it'll ship in Feb.

It's too expensive for my blood, but I see it as a proof of concept for future netbooks.

 

[Sandlot13]

PC user my entire life, built my own desktop etc etc...... I love Vista.......

got a macbook this summer, and would be hard pressed to buy a different laptop again. Love the mac, and its a benifit to know both platforms in my opinion. Go mac

 

[s1lver]

http://www.amazon.com/Pavilion-TX25...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1231706740&sr=8-1