Which laptop for Uni

[vhm672]

Originally Posted by wanye

you should be able to get the macbook air m1 for around £800 (less maybe) with educational discount pricing (using his student @*.ac.uk email account when he gets it, plus cheap office365/etc), and if it it treated right, will easily last 5 years. if its just for word processing/websites/teams/etc, it'll be a great bit of kit that has a huge battery life and is *extremely* portable.

if he wants to use it at home on a desk, i'd suggest a usb-c docking station (around £30 or less for an unbranded one off amazon) and an external monitor

i use both windows/macos/linux machines daily and they all serve different purposes, but for ease of use and not having to worry (too much) about viruses and malware, a mac is a great choice (albeit a bit more expensive for equivalently specced hardware)

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Agree the external monitor and a wireless keyboard and mouse too. This makes such a difference when it comes to document work. I can’t comment based on university as frankly I am too old ( computer room in the law faculty only had 5 computers!) but from working from home an external monitor makes such a difference especially when you need to look at two documents side by side.

[sky13]

Just my few cents about external monitor (+ other additional accessories) - my university college used to let us pack up our rooms over the holidays in return for not charging us rent for the holidays. So that meant I had to move and pack up my room multiple times a year (move in start of 1st term, pack up end of 1st term, unpack start of 2nd term, pack up end of 2nd term, etc).

Was just musing on this the other day when I bought (well, ordered) a really nice 27" monitor - was thinking that I probably wouldn't have wanted to keep packing and unpacking this while at university!

That being said, I'm really looking forward to getting my external monitor and it will hopefully make working from my computer easier.

I think maybe you could try holding off on the external monitor until you see how his uni room is set up and what the rules are like at his uni?
- How much space will there be on his desk for one - in terms of size of monitor and whether to get one. I feel like I might have had difficulty fitting the 27" monitor I bought on my desk one of my years in uni.
- Whether he needs one - he might be able to manage without one
- What the rules on room packing/unpacking are like (I think mine was the exception rather than the rule, but as students we were very happy not to have to pay rent for part of the year!)

[YorkshireT]

The M1 MacBook Air is the bargain of the laptop world. I have an M1 MacBook Pro, but to be honest not much difference. The Air can outperform the last generation of intel MacBook Pro’s costing many times the price in some scenarios. It’s a no brainer purchase if you want a laptop, unless you must have Windows.

[RuthieR]

Thanks everyone.I have listed all the suggestions for DH and DS to look at and digest. DH has an aversion to Apple stuff, don't know why and don't want to upset anyone. As soon as it is mentioned I can see him tense up, very funny to watch. We aim to visit PCWorld and test and try then buy else where.

DS will have room to have a monitor and keyboard etc on his desk in his room. The room is his from 18 Sept to July, no moving out in holiday time.

[Floridarules]

Macbook, I haven’t seen any University offers yet?- they usually offer ‘free’ beats headphones to uni students 👍

[TinselAngel]

I work in a University IT department And I’m going to buck the trend and say unless they are doing a very arty subject, don’t get a MacBook - it’s generally much easier to get support for a Windows laptop and most of the software used for teaching in higher education is Windows based. . A lot of our students with macs have spent half of lockdown working out how to remotely access Windows PCs on campus from their Mac so they can run the software they need for their course. Definitely check if the uni has any purchasing schemes for students before deciding.

Also check if the uni offers free Office 365 to students - most do - you shouldn’t need to pay for a personal subscription.

[Sew109]

I would advise against a MacBook if price is important, we are a mixed Mac and pc household DD and I have pc wife has PC and Mac and she is traditionally Mac but uses the PC more as it has more free software available. The biggest problem for me with Mac is that should you need to upgrade anything later on it’s expensive and if anything goes wrong it’s expensive adding an additional screen needs a superset adapter, also if your son is experience in windows and not Mac OS he will have to learn to use something new.

On the plus side the Mac is better build from better materials and will outlive the PC

[sky13]

Originally Posted by RuthieR

Thanks everyone.I have listed all the suggestions for DH and DS to look at and digest. DH has an aversion to Apple stuff, don't know why and don't want to upset anyone. As soon as it is mentioned I can see him tense up, very funny to watch. We aim to visit PCWorld and test and try then buy else where.

DS will have room to have a monitor and keyboard etc on his desk in his room. The room is his from 18 Sept to July, no moving out in holiday time.

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Good to know he would have space for one and doesn't need to move! Just thought I'd mention it above since I had literally just been thinking about this the other day when buying my monitor

Oh - couple more things to add about choosing a laptop/monitor if you can try them out in a store:
- Try loading up something text based on the screen and make the text small to look at the screen resolution. Can just be a google web search or similar. I just did this the other day with monitors and it immediately ruled out one of the monitors I was considering.
- Do a bit of typing on the keyboard. I often load up something like a typing test to see if the keyboard is nice and comfortable to type on. I've ruled out laptop models in the past because the keyboard was not good to type on.

Have fun trying out laptops!

Edit to add: the acceptable screen resolution for each person is quite subjective and also depends on how far away you will be from the screen when using it. The trade off for better screen resolution is of course cost...

[RuthieR]

Been and done the PCWorld try out. Quite interesting to actually compare side by side - some had very reflective screens (not good) and some screens were too small! The sales guy actually talked us out of Mac and said better to be windows based (as TinselAngel above said) because of compatibility with Uni and other devices. So 1st choice is Lenovo "somethingpad gaming" (I lost track/interest after a bit). DH seems to think he has some link to academic discount as still has a log in for Uni where he did some work this year.

Thanks everyone