Help Needed to Pick Laptop for High School

• 

  cypher67 on 31/08/2020 - 22:23

  +1

  Is the idea of buying through the school program that they will support them etc? Do you have the option to BYO and if so is there a downside to going this route?

  • 

    Linnylin on 31/08/2020 - 22:35

    Yes, they do offer support if you purchase their suggestions. BYO is an option but support isn't offered. I'm not very tech savy, so was thinking the school option might be better…

• 

  thatonethere on 31/08/2020 - 22:27

  +2

  Two things to check:

  1. what does the teacher use?
  2. what does the IT dept support more willingly?

  At my kids school you are pretty much screwed if you are windows as the teachers all use Mac and the IT dept loves Mac.

  • 

    Linnylin on 31/08/2020 - 22:36

    Thanks, I will check that out. The high end option was a Mac.

    • 

      samyall on 01/09/2020 - 09:32

      +2

      I know they are more expensive, but the build quality of Macs are still way better than anything else I have seen. I have had two MacBooks in the last 10 years and both have taken a real beating with no issues.

      My original MacBook Air went to uni with me every day for 4 years, went around the world twice and sold for $500 when I decided to upgrade after six years cause I needed higher specs.

• 

  RobBoss on 31/08/2020 - 22:27

  +4

  If you must choose between the 2, the latter would be much better given that 4GB RAM and Windows 10 really don't pair well together. But TBH I didn't know specs this low is still purchasable these days. Buy it yourself with $1000 and you'll get a much better bang for your buck.

• 

  mubd1234 on 31/08/2020 - 22:35

  +4

  4GB of RAM isn't that much to deal with these days. Celerons are flaming turds, too.

  I'd go with the latter, purely on the RAM side. Your kid would certainly need to upgrade their laptop within a year or two with that teeny tiny amount of RAM.

  Maybe ring the school and ask to speak to the TSO/computer coordinator/whoever is in charge of IT just to get an idea of if this is a strong recommendation to buy these laptops (if they might have special docking stations or something that ONLY work with these Lenovos), or if it's just default options for parents who don't know any better about IT.

• 

  greatlamp on 31/08/2020 - 22:49

  +2

  Do you really want an 11 inch screen?

  It's going to slow you down to keep scrolling all the time.

  https://www.lenovo.com/au/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-edge/…

  There is also an E15 which is basically the same, 15inch screen.

  Oh, and the AMD 4500U CPU is 400% faster.

  https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Celeron-N4100-vs-…

  (Seriously those Intel choices are junk from 2018)

  You don't get a touchscreen, but its a much better machine

• 

  Presence on 31/08/2020 - 23:38

  +3

  Those screen resolutions are atrocious. You'd need to scroll three screens to view a whole word doc.

  4GB of ram is a joke in 2020. Many phones have more.

  • 

    jackinyourbox on 01/09/2020 - 08:08

    +2

    My computer is a 2007 model and runs windows 10 fine with the recently upgraded 480gb ssd. It had 4 gb rams and Windows boots up in 10 secs! No complaints with slowness

    • 

      RobBoss on 01/09/2020 - 14:30

      +1

      There's not much correlation between boot-up speed and RAM size. A quick way to stress your 4GB of RAM is to open a few tabs and run a few programs. The machine will most definitely struggle and it will resort to virtual memory, ultimately slowing down your machine.

      • 

        jackinyourbox on 02/09/2020 - 08:27

        +2

        Yeah I meant it’s generally snappy performance and fast boot.

        I do general web browsing, word, Visio, excel, and PDF all at the same time no complaints. My docs are over 200pg with Visio imports.

        I doubt a high schooler does more than 30k word docs, hence my recommendation

• 

  AustriaBargain on 01/09/2020 - 01:55

  +1

  Why is the resolution of those displays so tiny. Some of these cheaper PCs run like garbage out of the box so you should watch out. You're going to use this thing daily for at least three years, as your primary learning tool, are you really only going to spend $300 a year on it? You're paying hundreds of dollars per topic so in the grand scheme of things you won't be paying much more for your education by getting a premium device from the start.

  EDIT: Oh you said highschool, not university.

• 

  jackinyourbox on 01/09/2020 - 08:06

  +1

  I would choose the cheaper option because the school is supporting them insinuating that it is sized appropriately for the work to be performed.

  Save the money for a better computer when your kid graduates and he has more friends with IT skills

• 

  slow on 01/09/2020 - 08:08

  +3

  Whatever you do, get minimum 8GB of RAM.

  Agree with the others….. if you can spend more and get a better machine up front - he is going to be using it a lot over the next few years and it will be an important part of his learning, so you want something that is going to work well for him

  With my son we didn't have a choice, had to choose from the school recommended machines which were all low-specced pieces of junk and run like a dog, causing frustration and annoyance.

  Also bear in mind that bigger screen often = heavier, and he will be carrying it to and from school every day

  • 

    abctoz on 01/09/2020 - 10:54

    you don't really need 8gb as it has a SSD for paging - use the SSD when extra memory needed

• 

  abctoz on 01/09/2020 - 10:52

  imo there is a significant tax here probably ~$300 on both

  in terms of cpu performance compare the geekbench 3 results:

  single core +50% - this is faster and makes things snappier
  multi core kinda even - when you're running a lot of stuff roughly even
  much faster igpu - more for low spec gaming

  https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_core_m3_8100…

  the extra ram+ssd is nice but not required for pure school use, its more for extracurricular activities :p

• 

  Noblejoker on 01/09/2020 - 12:03

  +1

  Easy choice - get something the school recommends
  They can support and it saves you headaches
  Get the cheapest option available
  Only possible saving is to find exact model on sale elsewhere and buy

  Why?
  You have a son - he will break it sooner or later - guaranteed
  I was lucky and both my boys only needed 2 pc's so far - but I still have a couple of years to go

  The cheaper Lenovo is adequate - just
  A larger screen and or higher resolution would be nice but don't mess with the recommendations - just pick one the school support
  Everything else doesn't matter much for a machine that accesses internet and types docs - it will do