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Seeking best laptop for daughter entering civil engineering college program

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Shades:
Overkill? With the rest of the specs in mind, I understand that quite some rendering is required for the civil engineering classes. And that is why extra graphics are a "nice to have" as specified in the hardware requirements.

Any laptop that comes with this extra graphical power built-in, comes with a heavy price tag, extra weight and poor battery life (think 3 to 4 hours on a fully charged battery). Or buy one that is cheaper, but with a Thunderbolt 3 port, so you can have graphical "muscle" with desktop grade components if you choose to. There is even the choice of what video card you are using. It can even be a second hand card.

In my experience, most cheaper laptops nowadays come with 8GByte of RAM as a default. Which is in and of itself plenty for practically every use case. Except for rendering, you'll need as much RAM as the laptop can support and that is often still not enough, unless you wish to wait several hours longer before a render is finished. The requirements indicated that this is a problem previously encountered in the course, so they set the bar to 16GByte of RAM directly from the beginning. While that makes sense from the course's point of view, it sure limits the choice of laptops to buy.

Have done rendering on a laptop without extra graphic "muscle" or sufficient RAM? There is a reason why I have the opinion that laptops are a poor substitute for a desktop system. More often than I like to admit there are laptops on my desk with the request to "make it faster". My response is always the same: spent money on putting as much RAM in it as the laptop supports and change the standard spinning drive for an SSD hard disk. The answer is always the same too: you will get some money to use your "tricks" to make it more responsive, but that is all the money being spent on it.

Last time a co-worker asked me what laptop he should buy, I found a very decent second hand Lenovo Thinkpad laptop for him and made him buy 16GByte of RAM to put in it. He was able to sell the original 8GByte RAM module to a classmate of his, so he didn't spend that much and his classmate also has a 16GByte laptop of a sudden. My coworker is very happy with the laptop, because it feels solid, the extra RAM makes compiling software a "smoother" experience too and he likes the "look" of the Thinkpad. The laptop already came with an SSD (boot) and standard hard disk (storage), so that was of no concern.

Buying a laptop with all the RAM it can support, has a few more benefits. First one is that it will be of more use for a much longer period. And re-sale value goes up to, if that is the way you want to go. Purchase price is the only thing people see when buying a laptop. While that is a significant part of the TCO, re-sale value is too. If you can get 6 years of proper use out of it, instead of thinking you need to replace the unit again after the usual 3 years, that has value too. 

Maybe I have read too much in the hardware requirements, but if not, that will be an expensive lesson to learn. If possible, kyrathaba should ask the school why the laptop requirements are as they are and adjust his buying according to the answer he gets. Cheaping out in the beginning is likely going to "bite" him later.

wraith808:
i5 or i7, 2.8GHz or faster processor, with 16GB RAM is not very high end on the specs department.  And I think he meant that the Thunderbolt requirement was a bit overkill, as most laptops that you'd find with it are a bit much.  I was going to suggest something like an Inspiron 5480.  It doesn't have the Thunderbolt, but does have a discrete NVidia card and is only $900 base with 16GB and i7.  Add on tax shipping and the requisite warranty and you're looking a little north of 1100.  Buying a laptop with the idea of adding an eGPU makes no sense to me for most uses.

Deozaan:
Has she considered something like a Surface Pro? It has a small enough form factor that she can easily tuck it in her backpack and take it virtually everywhere, but it's still a powerful enough machine (if you're willing to spend the money for the higher tier models) to do most anything she'd want.

wraith808:
Has she considered something like a Surface Pro? It has a small enough form factor that she can easily tuck it in her backpack and take it virtually everywhere, but it's still a powerful enough machine (if you're willing to spend the money for the higher tier models) to do most anything she'd want.
-Deozaan (June 02, 2019, 02:45 PM)
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I considered offering that up as an option, as I have one and it's one of the best things in my toolbox.  But the price consideration was what held me back from offering that up.

Shades:
i5 or i7, 2.8GHz or faster processor, with 16GB RAM is not very high end on the specs department.  And I think he meant that the Thunderbolt requirement was a bit overkill, as most laptops that you'd find with it are a bit much.  I was going to suggest something like an Inspiron 5480.  It doesn't have the Thunderbolt, but does have a discrete NVidia card and is only $900 base with 16GB and i7.  Add on tax shipping and the requisite warranty and you're looking a little north of 1100.  Buying a laptop with the idea of adding an eGPU makes no sense to me for most uses.
-wraith808 (June 02, 2019, 02:29 PM)
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In that case laptops are much cheaper in the US than they are here in Paraguay.

Another thing to consider: Business laptops from brands that have separate business and consumer models are preferable. Dell's business models are a good option too. Hardware support and maintenance is easier with business models than it is for consumer models. Try getting a new battery for a consumer model after a year. You are immediately relegated to buy a replacement from a 3rd party brand that may or may not affect guarantee.

In the Netherlands you have guarantee for a reasonable product life, meaning with proper use you can get 3 years out of a laptop and you can still make guarantee claims, even if the manufacturer or store where you make the purchase says there is only one year of guarantee. 3rd party parts nullify any claim out right. A consumer is very well protected in NL, here in PY guarantee is on the complete other end of the spectrum, an utter joke. So this may or may not be an issue in your neck of the woods.

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