School Laptop

I'll keep it short n' sweet. Its for internet, office, programming, and some light graphic work as well.

So far I've looked at:
15in Macbook Pro - $1,999 after student discount, plus a free 8gb iPod Touch

HP ENVY 15 - $1,100

Dell Studio XPS 16 - $1,200

Suggestions? I'm a sucker for metal construction. Or leather. That dell has leather.

Never ever ever get a laptop without an optical drive. Ever. That HP is a piece of crap for more reasons than that, but that is the major one.

That said, the Dell is a cheaper laptop with more powerful componentry and a bigger battery. To get the Dell you are talking about to match up with the HP on specs costs $1,219 (basically, you add Bluetooth). The HP costs $1,249 (it needs a better processor which is still slower than the one in the Dell and the external optical drive). Despite costing less, the Dell has a considerably more powerful processor, a larger battery, higher screen screen resolution, a better card readers and an internal optical drive.

The only disadvantage the Dell has is a worse GPU, which the processor would for the most part offset. However, because the Dell has a processor that has less power draw (but is still more powerful), a somewhat weaker GPU and a larger battery, the Dell would likely get considerably better battery life. Furthermore, because the Dell has a Core-i7, it may be able to support USB 3.0 with a future firmware patch. The HP will not.

I have a question. Are you going to be taking this laptop to class? Those laptops are pretty hefty for lugging around.

Welcome to the site!

Probably Aron, but I'm pretty used to carrying a 50lb backpack around...I didnt use my locker in highschool.

And thanks Tornado. I'll count that HP out.

What kind of graphics are we talking about? What's your budget? Are you planning on using this exclusively (no desktop)? Do you plan on gaming? What kind of games?

The more info, the better. Informed choices are good.

I do some CAD/Photoshop work, but nothing too crazy. My budget is <$2500, and it will be my exclusive machine - no desktop. No games either, despite the username.

Thanks again.

If you're not married to the Mac, the Dell is probably the machine to get.

I'd be happy taking a Mac, but the price premium is a bit too much for me. Are you going to run Linux on it?

No plans for linux, its really not necessary or practical for me TBH. I'd probably end up running Win7 is parallels along with OSX, which would add to the cost.

If you are going to use this sans desktop, I would build it up a bit so it lasts you a bit longer. Get the high resolution screen option and possibly the 840QM processor. Laptop memory is all standardized, so I would buy 8GB of RAM off of Newegg and then sell the RAM that came with it on eBay. I'd also buy one of those new 750GB WD hard drives instead of the 640GB Dell offers as an option.

As an alternative, I would suggest an HP Pavilion dv6t Select Edition. It can be built up in a very similar way to the Dell (except for screen resolution), but it is $200 cheaper with alot more goodies included. For example, if you get the 840QM processor in the HP you get a free Blu-Ray drive included.

Said By Aron Schatz

I have a question. Are you going to be taking this laptop to class? Those laptops are pretty hefty for lugging around.

Pfft. Real men carry 17" and up laptops. To and from school. Every day. Towards the end of my first year of college, I was beginning to think 17" wasn't big enough, because many of my friends had gotten 18" and 18.4" laptops after I got mine.

I think the radius on the corners of the HP latops is too big.

I'm a sucker for design, lol.

Fair enough.
Then I would suggest the Dell Studio XPS 16 with the Intel Core i7 840QM, Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit (Unless you want Windows XP mode. Then get Professional. Unlike with Vista, there really isn't any real reason to upgrade to Ultimate.), 4GB of RAM, the 500GB 7200RPM drive, the 1080p screen upgrade, and the internal Bluetooth module.
If you upgrade the RAM to 8GB and upgrade the HDD to 750GB by working through Newegg, it wouldn't cost you as much money as if you went through the Dell site, and you can resell the extra stuff afterwards to make some of it back. Either way, I would suggest 8GB of RAM, because I know how much of a resource hog AutoCAD can be.
It is more laptop than you would need, but it would also last you a lot longer than the base model would so you probably wouldn't have to replace it for several years. It would also still be a couple hundred dollars cheaper than the Macbook Pro if you went through Newegg (though about the same price if you got everything from Dell), but it would annihilate it on performance and you wouldn't need to run Bootcamp (which can be tricky to set up, and it tends to hate 64-bit versions of Windows even though it promises compatibility).


Also, I would personally get the Blu-Ray drive addon (which adds $191 to the price), but I dunno if you would care. It is an expensive add-on, but the Dell has HDMI out and a 1080p screen, so I think it would kind of go to waste without one.

Said By Tornado

If you are going to use this sans desktop, I would build it up a bit so it lasts you a bit longer. Get the high resolution screen option and possibly the 840QM processor. Laptop memory is all standardized, so I would buy 8GB of RAM off of Newegg and then sell the RAM that came with it on eBay. I'd also buy one of those new 750GB WD hard drives instead of the 640GB Dell offers as an option.

As an alternative, I would suggest an HP Pavilion dv6t Select Edition. It can be built up in a very similar way to the Dell (except for screen resolution), but it is $200 cheaper with alot more goodies included. For example, if you get the 840QM processor in the HP you get a free Blu-Ray drive included.

Said By Aron Schatz

I have a question. Are you going to be taking this laptop to class? Those laptops are pretty hefty for lugging around.

Pfft. Real men carry 17" and up laptops. To and from school. Every day. Towards the end of my first year of college, I was beginning to think 17" wasn't big enough, because many of my friends had gotten 18" and 18.4" laptops after I got mine.

To be honest, the difference between 4gb and 8gb of ram is minimal. It would only be advisable to run 8gb of ram in something that would be very image, or application intensive, and none of the laptops that you listed would run image or application intensive programs.
If in fact, you are just using a laptop for a "desktop" replacement, and only doing minor image editing, and an older "AutoCAD" program, then I would stick with the 4gb of ram.

I disagree. In my experience, for Windows Vista/7 64-bit, 8GB is the sweet spot; and the 840QM, while not the most powerful thing on the market (though close to it in regards to laptops) could still easily pound out enough multitasking work to use up all of 4GB. 6GB would probably be closer to the most he could use at any point in time, but at that point he might as well upgrade both sticks to 4GB instead of just one of them. That way, he wouldn't have to deal with it for a good while.