Need help picking out a Laptop for college. ME Major

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>I'm going to ODU and they recommend the Dell Latitiude 15 5000 series for Engineering students, but they are selling it for 1500 and I think that's too much for that laptop (although it is a Solid State, with 500GB on the Hard Drive). So I went on amazon and looks for other laptops with similar or better specs. So I'm down to the Samsung ATIV Book 4, Toshiba Satellite S55-B5258, HP Envy 15, and Dell Inspiron i5547-7500sLV. Their prices range from $680- $797, the Dell is the most expensive. They all meet or exceed these specs (except the dells processor speed is 2.0 GHZ), which were taken from the laptop ODU recommended:</p>

<p>Processor: Intel i7 - 4600U - 2.1GHz
Ram: 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Hard Drive: 500GB</p>

<p>So I guess the real question is which brand is structurally more sound, would last me longer. I like the aesthetics of the HP Envy, but feel it would be to light and flimsy. I like the Toshiba as well but the way the screen is hinged on doesn't seem stable to me. Here are the links for further information: </p>

<p>Samsung
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EHVNF3M/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=36BM03LJSLPPH&coliid=I2TYK1JXAO6L95"&gt;http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EHVNF3M/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=36BM03LJSLPPH&coliid=I2TYK1JXAO6L95&lt;/a>
Toshiba
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KDIT97Y/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=36BM03LJSLPPH&coliid=I5FRKMAAQRFR0"&gt;http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KDIT97Y/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=36BM03LJSLPPH&coliid=I5FRKMAAQRFR0&lt;/a>
HP
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HLOKKU8/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=36BM03LJSLPPH&coliid=ITVM0K4OGVKXV"&gt;http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HLOKKU8/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=36BM03LJSLPPH&coliid=ITVM0K4OGVKXV&lt;/a>
Dell
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K4PALMI/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=36BM03LJSLPPH&coliid=IPTTMEYOC5CLJ"&gt;http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K4PALMI/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=36BM03LJSLPPH&coliid=IPTTMEYOC5CLJ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

2

<p>They’re all fine. Those makers all intermittently make good machines and duds. I’d stay away from the touch screen and buy the cheapest one with the highest customer rating. Good luck.</p>

3

<p>If your university has a good setup of computer labs, you won’t need to run engineering software on your computer.</p>

<p>At my university, the most intensive stuff I ran was MATLAB on VMware remote desktop.</p>

<p>I would advise getting a high-end i3 or low-end i5, and use the saved money to get an SSD, which will significantly lower boot times. Any SSD will do, since even the slowest ones will be far faster than a HDD. Most SSDs allow longer battery run time.</p>

<p>Avoid PNY and Kingston though, since they tried to pull a bait-and-switch by swapping SSD components for cheaper ones after reviews were published and keeping the same model numbering without notifying anyone.</p>

<p>An i3 + SSD is going to be more responsive than an i7 + HDD with the exception of heavy CPU tasks.</p>

<p>If your laptop has a DVD drive, you can replace the DVD drive with a HDD for more storage space.</p>

4

<p>Go Monarchs!</p>

5

<p>By the way, regarding the CPU requirement that I recommended, for a year, I used a Samsung laptop that had a 1.3 GHz Sandybridge i3 (2xxxm something) locked at 0.8 GHz as soon as the battery mode was enabled. It lagged when I fired up VMware remote desktop.</p>

<p>There was no way to change that setting without installing one of their “utilities” software, which turned out to be incompatible with the laptop I was using. And I couldn’t change it in the BIOS either.</p>

<p>The only thing that helped keep the laptop responsive was the SSD that I installed.</p>

<p>Glorious 800mhz dual core!</p>