Don’t Waste Money on a New Computer for College | Hacker News Reader

Don’t Waste Money on a New Computer for College

techcrunch.com

9 pointscwan10 comments

I've got a part time job on campus, and as such I've got an office with my 24-inch iMac in it (not to mention a 10,000 core supercomputer that I'm a sysadmin to). We've got plenty of linux labs (I used to admin those as well). I definitely could survive without my macbook pro. But at the same time, there's something nice about having my own private dev machine. A cheap machine on craigslist couldn't handle 5 hours of class without being plugged in. I couldn't build iPhone Apps in Xcode instead of paying attention in my CS classes. Also, I doubt a used laptop from craigslist could survive a trip through my windshield (happened last thanksgiving when my car rolled 4 times.) And an old machine is not going to have backlit keyboard, which is very useful for 12-4am coding sessions. At the same time, I'm pretty sure my wife (History Teaching major) would do fine on a used machine.

soooo you recommend a used macbook pro?

Actually, I've not bought a new Apple laptop in years - but have bought several refurbs (~10% off). Never had one I had trouble with (or could tell was not 100% new).

Does this guy realize how much it sucks to go into a computer lab in the middle of Boston winter to code up your assignments instead of sitting at home?

Having your own reasonably performant dev enviornment at home is amazing. You could always ssh into dialup machines, but generally the public ones aren't the best for working.

>If you’re pursuing a liberal arts degree, you really don’t need a brand new computer just to write all the papers you’ll write.

Well, if you're an undergrad and your school is inflicting Blackboard or Desire2Learn software, you find the sluggishness on older machines to be agony. In my humble experience.

Related FWIW: when I, as instructor, am perusing student records or developing a course, I am grateful for a 27" iMac. Tiny screens add to the BB/D2L sluggishness. [/rant]

suggest that the link is changed from the techcrunch article, to the one techcrunch leads to, that is: http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/09/11/dont-waste-money-on-a-n...

edit:

on the actual content of the article: I've found in my experience, that I can't use any of the school's computers. This is out of self-choice, in that I like unix (even in CS, we have a ton of windows boxes), and I use dvorak (lugging my computer to all labs means I get to touch-type at 70-80 wpm as opposed to hunting & pecking at 20-30 wpm).

> I use dvorak

You couldn't go into the control panel and change the keyboard layout?

In my experience, windows doesn't apply dvorak universally when I try to set it to. It's much more productive on my end to just bring my own computer.

On the XP boxes in my school i just add dvorak to the layouts. The machines have multiple layouts already(im in Bulgaria), so nobody notices until they misclick, and they usually have the common sense to check the current layout(when they don't, a small intellectual tragedy occurs, especially if they happen to be CS students).

Our university are fully equipped with windows machines. To a life long mac user like me, this was unacceptable. Of course I didn't use any money on a new computer... just brought my own mac.

I haven't owned a windows computer since I was 9 years old.

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