What Would You Consider Minimum Requirements For A Laptop?
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Very few of the laptops will last 4-5 years especially if intensively used. Dell (if you’re lucky and with regularly cleaning) and Toshiba could survive that long, but everything else will probably vanish after the second year taking with it your money.
There is only one Vera Farmiga and Salma Hayek is her prophet! Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
Funny that. I have Toshiba kit and it lasts.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
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I have a Toshiba that is on year 3, a Lenovo that is going year two and my big Asus that is in its first year. If taken care of properly I see no reason whatsoever that a laptop cannot last that long. We have laptops here at the company I work for that were bought long before vista was even out... and they still work. Compared to newer machines they might be slow and cranky, but they do work about as good as they did when purchased.
Programming is a race between programmers trying to build bigger and better idiot proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots, so far... the universe is winning. Be careful which toes you step on today, they might be connected to the foot that kicks your butt tomorrow. You can't scare me, I have children.
My work P4 laptop is going on 8 years - the only thing I did to it is swap out the HDD for a SDD while the HDD was still good :thumbsup:
Steve _________________ I C(++) therefore I am
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I'm considering buying a laptop, primarily because I need to be able to do schoolwork anywhere, even when travelling for work. I haven't a clue what to get, though I know I don't want to spend a ton for a premium machine with features I'll never need. My expected uses would include: Checking into the online school features Reading online and locally stored books in pdf and Kindle form Composing homework assignments in Word and Excel Occasional C# development, and web stuff SQL server express access General web surfing and email checking/composing Accessing my home network from around the house Looking for naughty pictures on the 'net from my hotel room No gaming, no 3D rendering, scratch-n-sniff interface not required. Key things that worry me are lack of functionality in Windows 7 Home Premium (I don't know what it's lacking), small memory available, i3 vs i5 vs i7 capabilities, and generally what to expect. I can get a decent Dell with an i3, 320GB HDD, 3 GB RAM, and Win7 Home Premium for under $500, but will it be something I can use effectively, or will I be regreting it in 6 months? What would you look for, and why?
Will Rogers never met me.
Roger, I needed about the same when I went back to school with mostly the same specifications. I found an HP laptop at Sam's Club for $300 that came with a printer. It's served me well and the price was right. I loaded it with student versions of Office, VS, Matlab, etc. and it works fine. YMMV, of course.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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I'm considering buying a laptop, primarily because I need to be able to do schoolwork anywhere, even when travelling for work. I haven't a clue what to get, though I know I don't want to spend a ton for a premium machine with features I'll never need. My expected uses would include: Checking into the online school features Reading online and locally stored books in pdf and Kindle form Composing homework assignments in Word and Excel Occasional C# development, and web stuff SQL server express access General web surfing and email checking/composing Accessing my home network from around the house Looking for naughty pictures on the 'net from my hotel room No gaming, no 3D rendering, scratch-n-sniff interface not required. Key things that worry me are lack of functionality in Windows 7 Home Premium (I don't know what it's lacking), small memory available, i3 vs i5 vs i7 capabilities, and generally what to expect. I can get a decent Dell with an i3, 320GB HDD, 3 GB RAM, and Win7 Home Premium for under $500, but will it be something I can use effectively, or will I be regreting it in 6 months? What would you look for, and why?
Will Rogers never met me.
Since you are travelling a lot and not interested in gaming/3d stuff. I will suggest you Dell Vostro v131[^]. (~ $700.00) It's a decent laptop with looooooong battery life (around 8 hours, and now it is user replacable) and a core i3 processor with enough RAM (get al-least 4GB). and it's not a netbook. plus it got style + nice build quality. :) and for reading books, I will strongly suggest you to get Kindle[^] (it's just around $110.00 now) if you care about your eyes (which costs more than $110.00). ;) Before you decide to go with the netbooks, you should try typing on that keyboard (and if you think you will get used to it, try typing on regular keyboard afterwards :-D ). plus you will get a screen with infinite scroll bars... and get Windows 7 Home premium, I dont think you will miss anything (unless you want to join active directory and want to use bitlocker)... it now has IIS also (which is getting optional now a days since we have IIS Express). ---- and if you dont want to spend this much money and if you are happy with smaller screen. then nothing beats Thinkpad x120e[^], That AMD Fusion APU has enough power to run day to day apps smoothly.
modified on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 2:39 PM
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Funny that. I have Toshiba kit and it lasts.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
That’s what I’m saying: Toshiba or Dell and a good maintenance. Oterwise: :((
There is only one Vera Farmiga and Salma Hayek is her prophet! Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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AFAIK the Windows Home version doesn’t include IIS, so if you’re planning to do web development with ASP it’s probably not for you. For the desktop development I don’t know any differences or restrictions with the pro version. The processor is not so important for what you are going to use the laptop, but you have to go for 4 GB RAM, just to be on the save side. In the moment I have opened VS 2010, few office applications and a browser and the memory usage is well above 2 GB. I also would stay away from the netbooks. They are good for internet backup devices or casual browsing, but the screen is too small for what you want to use it.
There is only one Vera Farmiga and Salma Hayek is her prophet! Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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I have a Toshiba that is on year 3, a Lenovo that is going year two and my big Asus that is in its first year. If taken care of properly I see no reason whatsoever that a laptop cannot last that long. We have laptops here at the company I work for that were bought long before vista was even out... and they still work. Compared to newer machines they might be slow and cranky, but they do work about as good as they did when purchased.
Programming is a race between programmers trying to build bigger and better idiot proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots, so far... the universe is winning. Be careful which toes you step on today, they might be connected to the foot that kicks your butt tomorrow. You can't scare me, I have children.
Keep your fingers crossed for the Lenovo and the Asus. And as I said it depends how extensively they are used.
There is only one Vera Farmiga and Salma Hayek is her prophet! Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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Thanks for the info and you’re right my confusion probably comes from win XP.
There is only one Vera Farmiga and Salma Hayek is her prophet! Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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I'm considering buying a laptop, primarily because I need to be able to do schoolwork anywhere, even when travelling for work. I haven't a clue what to get, though I know I don't want to spend a ton for a premium machine with features I'll never need. My expected uses would include: Checking into the online school features Reading online and locally stored books in pdf and Kindle form Composing homework assignments in Word and Excel Occasional C# development, and web stuff SQL server express access General web surfing and email checking/composing Accessing my home network from around the house Looking for naughty pictures on the 'net from my hotel room No gaming, no 3D rendering, scratch-n-sniff interface not required. Key things that worry me are lack of functionality in Windows 7 Home Premium (I don't know what it's lacking), small memory available, i3 vs i5 vs i7 capabilities, and generally what to expect. I can get a decent Dell with an i3, 320GB HDD, 3 GB RAM, and Win7 Home Premium for under $500, but will it be something I can use effectively, or will I be regreting it in 6 months? What would you look for, and why?
Will Rogers never met me.
If you're on the road, it might be important to check the battery life and related hardware (storage in particular) to optimize batteries. Buying a laptop today, I'd get a smaller solid-state drive.
Watched code never compiles.
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I'm considering buying a laptop, primarily because I need to be able to do schoolwork anywhere, even when travelling for work. I haven't a clue what to get, though I know I don't want to spend a ton for a premium machine with features I'll never need. My expected uses would include: Checking into the online school features Reading online and locally stored books in pdf and Kindle form Composing homework assignments in Word and Excel Occasional C# development, and web stuff SQL server express access General web surfing and email checking/composing Accessing my home network from around the house Looking for naughty pictures on the 'net from my hotel room No gaming, no 3D rendering, scratch-n-sniff interface not required. Key things that worry me are lack of functionality in Windows 7 Home Premium (I don't know what it's lacking), small memory available, i3 vs i5 vs i7 capabilities, and generally what to expect. I can get a decent Dell with an i3, 320GB HDD, 3 GB RAM, and Win7 Home Premium for under $500, but will it be something I can use effectively, or will I be regreting it in 6 months? What would you look for, and why?
Will Rogers never met me.
I have a Gateway with an i5 processor, some huge amount of disk space I'm only using 30% of, and 4GB RAM with W7 Home Premium. I use it almost constantly for heavy duty development: Visual Studio 8 and 9, SQL Server, Oracle Personal Edition, various tools, etc. My only complaint is that I wish it had an illuminated keyboard. Otherwise, the machine is delightful. Marc
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Very few of the laptops will last 4-5 years especially if intensively used. Dell (if you’re lucky and with regularly cleaning) and Toshiba could survive that long, but everything else will probably vanish after the second year taking with it your money.
There is only one Vera Farmiga and Salma Hayek is her prophet! Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
Deyan Georgiev wrote:
Very few of the laptops will last 4-5 years especially if intensively used.
I've been using an IBM ThinkPad (Pentium III) at work everyday for the past 7-ish years. It's slower than cold molasses but does its job nonetheless.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"Some people are making such thorough preparation for rainy days that they aren't enjoying today's sunshine." - William Feather
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I'm considering buying a laptop, primarily because I need to be able to do schoolwork anywhere, even when travelling for work. I haven't a clue what to get, though I know I don't want to spend a ton for a premium machine with features I'll never need. My expected uses would include: Checking into the online school features Reading online and locally stored books in pdf and Kindle form Composing homework assignments in Word and Excel Occasional C# development, and web stuff SQL server express access General web surfing and email checking/composing Accessing my home network from around the house Looking for naughty pictures on the 'net from my hotel room No gaming, no 3D rendering, scratch-n-sniff interface not required. Key things that worry me are lack of functionality in Windows 7 Home Premium (I don't know what it's lacking), small memory available, i3 vs i5 vs i7 capabilities, and generally what to expect. I can get a decent Dell with an i3, 320GB HDD, 3 GB RAM, and Win7 Home Premium for under $500, but will it be something I can use effectively, or will I be regreting it in 6 months? What would you look for, and why?
Will Rogers never met me.
Just get yourself a netbook, unless you really want a bigger screen. Your list about sums up what I use mine for, and it's just an Intel Atom with 2 GB ram. (Of course, mine also cost $500 but that's because I got one with a touchscreen that rotates so I can also use it as a tablet...). Just remember, if you get a netbook you may need an external CD drive. You probably won't miss it though.
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I'm considering buying a laptop, primarily because I need to be able to do schoolwork anywhere, even when travelling for work. I haven't a clue what to get, though I know I don't want to spend a ton for a premium machine with features I'll never need. My expected uses would include: Checking into the online school features Reading online and locally stored books in pdf and Kindle form Composing homework assignments in Word and Excel Occasional C# development, and web stuff SQL server express access General web surfing and email checking/composing Accessing my home network from around the house Looking for naughty pictures on the 'net from my hotel room No gaming, no 3D rendering, scratch-n-sniff interface not required. Key things that worry me are lack of functionality in Windows 7 Home Premium (I don't know what it's lacking), small memory available, i3 vs i5 vs i7 capabilities, and generally what to expect. I can get a decent Dell with an i3, 320GB HDD, 3 GB RAM, and Win7 Home Premium for under $500, but will it be something I can use effectively, or will I be regreting it in 6 months? What would you look for, and why?
Will Rogers never met me.
What environment do you want to use it in? For tough use, you may want to look at one of the ruggedized Dell or Panasonic laptops. I have heard good things about both, but have no personal experience.
Best wishes, Hans
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Go for the most expensive you can possibly afford with the highest spec it will give you. I'd advice a $1,000 now and keep it for 4-5 years [I'll burn for that one] against a $250 cheap and cheerful that is a doorstop before the warranty runs out.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
My kids, who inherit my cast off machines, have just expired a Dell that was 7+ yo, I bought it as a desktop replacement, used it for 3 years, travelling! Then they cog a Compaq that is not 4yo and working happily! Maybe they are building in a shorter life these days but some of the older machines were quite robust.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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I personally would want at least win pro, you never know what the future holds for you. Same thing to be said for the processor. i3 would be sufficient for what you are describing but you never know. in a few months you might get an itch to get into mobile programming or some such thing, then you might think that the i5 would have been better. ram.. get all it can take :-D I have a win 7 ultimate, i7 processor, 8 gig ram, and highly rated everything else(such as graphics card). But I specifically bought mine for development. I run up to 5 vms some days, multiple visual studios etc..I also run things such as Eclipse with the Android and crackberry plugins.Yes, it cost a tad more than the 500 dollar mark. That being said, I recently bought a laptop for an employee(company money of course) that had win 7 pro, an i5 processor, 4 gig ram and over 500 gig hard drive for right at 800 bucks..Dell Vostro of some sort I think it was.
Programming is a race between programmers trying to build bigger and better idiot proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots, so far... the universe is winning. Be careful which toes you step on today, they might be connected to the foot that kicks your butt tomorrow. You can't scare me, I have children.
Good points - Thanks! I definitely want Win7Pro - being able to join my domain is probably going to be handy. I looked at the Vostro, and it's a nice machine. But I don't think I could get much done on a 14" screen.
Will Rogers never met me.
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What you are describing pretty much matches a netbook I got - eMachines e350 uk amazon clickety[^]. It's cheap, has an excellent battery life, is extremely light, boots very fast and I have even been able to do a bit of .Net development on it(I upgraded to 2 gig memory) . I know netbooks are not everybody's cup of tea - but I was amazed at how well it performed and feel like I made a very good choice.
Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.(Winston Churchill)
A netbook is probably a good choice for you youngsters, but I can't see the screen without squinting, and the keys are far too small.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Go for the most expensive you can possibly afford with the highest spec it will give you. I'd advice a $1,000 now and keep it for 4-5 years [I'll burn for that one] against a $250 cheap and cheerful that is a doorstop before the warranty runs out.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
That's my usual rule of thumb, too. But I don't want to afford that much, even though I can. I have far too many other projects of higher importance to spend money on right now, so about $500 is the limit I'm setting on myself.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Don't overlook netbooks, we bought one, filled it up on ram and so far I've been extremely impressed. Huge battery life, very small and compact and haven't run into any limitations with windows and once the extra ram was added performance is excellent. Don't use it for any development though.
There is no failure only feedback
I've looked at netbooks at Sam's Club, and they're not noticibly cheaper than full laptops. The screens are also damned near invisible, and the keys aren't much larger than my phone's. Yuck... X|
Will Rogers never met me.
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A netbook is probably a good choice for you youngsters, but I can't see the screen without squinting, and the keys are far too small.
Will Rogers never met me.
Screen-wise you are correct(although the touchpad does allow me to use gestures to increase teh screen magnification) - keyboard-wise I just measured Q to p against my standard keyboard and the netbook is only around 1/2" shorter...
Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.(Winston Churchill)
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With the exception of C# development and SQL Server Express, you've got everything that my wife does with a netbook. The battery life on these things is pretty incredible too. Possibly just ensuring you got maximum memory in the thing may make up for the programming you wish to do. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
As I mentioned in other replies, a netbook is probably a good solution, but they're much too small for me to use comfortably. But since I'm not planning on it being my primary machine, and speed doesn't much matter when you have nothing better to do than stare at the walls of your hotel room, I'm wondering if an i3 is sufficient. Laptops equipped with them are fairly cheap, and as far as I know, the i5 and i7 just add capabilities that I don't need, like enhanced multimedia stuff.
Will Rogers never met me.