Laptop for College

**gwpriester** · 14 August 2017, 01:05 AM

Costco usually has some very good deals and they provide 2 years of support I think.

Mary has an HP Pavilion, the one that can be configured either as a computer or a tablet. Not sure what would be good for an engineering student. Probably for that more RAM because he will probably be using CAD and maybe 3D applications. I'm not much help here I'm afraid.

**Ron Duke** · 14 August 2017, 02:39 AM

Actually, that was helpful Gary. Thank you.

**csehz** · 14 August 2017, 11:56 AM

Young people like the trendy things so the laptop presumably should be a good one

In that just mentioning some directions -> the best processor is the Intel i7 generation now, if the RAM is DDR4 then 8Gb RAM is enough for almost everything even in a gamer laptop, but there should be some graphics card in the laptop and better if that is NVidia. Plus there is a technology change currently in hard drives, that the HDD drives are going and SSD drives are coming, the SSD is much faster/less noise/less power consumption as having no moving parts, just still being expensive at this moment.

So a good machine is Intel i7 or can be also i5, but DDR4 8Gb RAM and graphics card Nvidia with around 4GB to keep it cheaper (Nvidia GTX 1080 is the top now), with SSD hard drive (or combo HDD and SSD to keep it cheaper).

**Ron Duke** · 14 August 2017, 02:52 PM

Thank you csehz!

**Albacore** · 15 August 2017, 09:47 AM

Hi Ron if the laptop is for college work I wouldn't spend much money on it as it's going to get a lot of knocking around. There're many ultra thin ones being sold at the moment and they flex in the lower half of the laptop and to get one that will last 3 or 4 years you need to spend over $1000. I would go cheap and they're some good ones kicking around with OK processor and H/disc like the Acer Aspire E 15 at around $330. You wont know the demands of your grandsons course till he gets well into his area of study and he might will be handling 3D files which will need a bit more grunt. So why spend a huge amount now when you don't know what's in the future for your grandson. Another one that I use a lot in the college that I now work in is the old fashion looking Lenovo ThinkPad 13 at $700 it's built like a tank and has great battery life.