Ask HN: Decent £1000 Laptop for IT Student? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Decent £1000 Laptop for IT Student?

1 pointaxismundi5 comments

Hi HN,

I’m going to be an IT student in September and I'm looking for some advice on getting a new laptop. I’ll be using it for coding, maybe running a couple of virtual machines, and the usual uni stuff like taking notes and doing research. I might also dabble in a bit of graphic design and light gaming when I have time.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

I've asked at the uni and they recommend Intel or AMD with Windows.

Needs to handle multitasking without slowing down.

Something easy to carry around campus.

Ideally lasts a full day without needing a charge.

Costs around £1,000, but I can stretch a bit if it’s worth it.

Any recommendations?

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https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb&sort=p&xf=12_32768

32GB is probably overkill, but there's like 150+ filters available for limiting the selection differently. If you want a lower price point to start with and require some other features, definitely try 16GB RAM, it's quite likely sufficient for your use case.

Why does the school recommend Windows unless your classes specifically need them (for certain software)?

A Mac is a much much better choice these days, any of the Apple Silicon stuff with at least 16 but preferably 32 gigs of RAM. Used if the new stuff is too expensive. No Intel or AMD comes close, and Windows is ad-infested trashware.

If you absolutely need x86 for some reason, then maybe a ThinkPad, and put Linux on it.

Don't get some generic cheap Windows laptop. It'll only slow you down and load a bunch of useless apps at startup and bombard you with ads and have terrible battery life and no support and moving parts that crap out after a year or two.

If you need gaming, use GeForce Now rather than the expense, heat, and battery usage of a dedicated GPU. The Apple Silicon GPUs are decent but you can only emulate x86 games on them via Rosetta or Crossover and neither is great.

You can get a gigabyte laptop with 2Tb nvme, 32Gb ram, and a txt 4060 for around that much.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0CQ87LHBW/ref=dp_ob_neva_mob...

Has Windows gotten really slow in the last year or something?

I'm using a 2018 Asus with an i5 and Intel graphics, and it handles everything except heavy gaming (It's perfectly fine for indie and retro).

I would try to find hard data on reliability. Which brands and models are reliable seems to change every year, so I can't actually recommend anything.

I think I would probably also try to find something with some ability to run existing ready to go AI models, since so many are NVIDIA only. Local LLM performance is probably going to be a big help for coding.

I would probably also look for USB-C power even at the expense of performance, now that so many power banks can run laptops.

“I've asked at the uni and they recommend Intel or AMD with Windows.” …. As opposed to what? Fucking useless of them. Go on eBay and get a X1/Carbon Nano few generations old.

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