What laptop are you buying for University?

What program are u going into?

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Queen's Life Science with Xray Technology class of 2012

mayb a tablet laptop.. math and business.

I'm guessing it'll be useful for note taking, and organizing my messy math solutions..

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uw/wlu DD '13

Got a Lenovo Thinkpad T61p in March. Chemical Engineering

Macbook

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Queen's Commerce 2012

tecra toshiba, got it this time last year, no complaints yet

I'll probably spend about 600 or so on a core 2 duo lappy that's light weight and has a long battery life.

Looking at the new Dell's "business" line called Vostro..

guys guys, question. if you get a laptop now, what are the chances it will work fine for all of undergrad aka 4 years?
Esp a macbook/macbook pro?

Ooosh, how is your ibook holding up after 3 years?

My brother is totally convincing me now to not get a laptop for first year and just use my desktop. And use the year to see what I specifically need in a laptop and spend more money on a better laptop for 2nd year... like when the macbooks upgrade I suppose. Does that make sense :S

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If you go for a higher end laptop now, I'm pretty sure you'll be set for the next 4 years.

Unfortunatley processors aren't getting any faster anymore due to materialistic restrictions on transistors, and therefore to keep up with Moore's Law, Intel, AMD and others are just doubling the amount of transistors they can put on a wafer (i.e. making it Dual or Quad core).

I perosnally don't believe for the next 4 or 5 years, that there will be a growth of people who can program and develop multi-core software to actually take advantage of all the new processors to their true abilities so in summary, yes what you get now should last you.

If this was 5 years ago though, it would've been a definite no. Things change quickly.. I could be wrong too!

(If this was technical I apologize, I just came back after a day at nVidia offices lol)

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-University of Toronto Electrical Engineering 1T0!

I have had some issues in the past (something coming loose inside), but it was fixed and I have not had problems since. I was under the impression that I would buy a new desktop computer after finishing university and moving to a new apartment back in Toronto (or wherever I get a job), and my computer will last that long.

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Uschi
Queen's '10

I think you are better off planning on buying 2 laptops over the course of your university years. But some are more likely to last 4 years than others, and Macs are up there for durability.

The Dell Latitude model I got to use for 2 years was absolute crap in terms of durability, but I don't think Dell is using the same case design as they did then, and the others I've seen have been better. I heard it from a reliable source that the leasing company considered a lawsuit against Acadia for the condition those laptops were in after 2 years - but knowing how I treated my laptop, and seeing all the laptops, and other non Acadia people with the laptops, it's Dell's fault for making the case scratch easily (and badly), dent fairly easily, crack at the edges of the case, come apart a little at the seams, and have things like the hinges get really loose and/or fail completely. And that's before getting into hardware problems. I had one laptop before, IBM Thinkpad (before Lenovo, but they are still supposed to be great) and LG (wireless has always been flakey, but otherwise good).

Note that I want to emphasize this particularly from the perspective of someone who might be tempted to spend $2500-$3000 on some uber powerful laptop hoping it will last them 4 years for gaming. You will be far, far better off buying 2 $1250-$1500 laptops than that - if you're $3000 conks out the day after warranty ends, you're screwed, and the $1500 laptop 2 years from now is likely just as powerful as the $3000 one today if not more so.

While they aren't super super delicate, there are a lot of things that can happen, both that are your fault and random failure, and once the warranty is up a lot of these things are very expensive to repair. When the mainboard on the aforementioned Dell gave way, I looked it up and if it was me paying for it, I looked it up and the part cost $600 (Fast free laptop repair is truly the Acadia Advantage ;). And then there's things that tend to wear out over time - after 2 years batteries are really starting to give out (On my 3 laptops, by a bit less than 2 years, 1 was going strong, 1 had had a replacement battery for a non-charge related issue, and 1 has a completely dead battery - and it's not a model issue, with the first one in particular I heard lots of stories of dead batteries), maybe the hinges are getting a bit loose, etc. I'm not saying "Get a new laptop after 2 years", but plan for it, and maybe you wind up getting a new one at 3 years or 1.5 years or for grad school, etc.

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