<p>I'm heading off to Union College in New York next year, and I'm torn as to my computer resources for college.</p>
<p>My current desktop that I built three years ago is finally in need of replacement. I already have a new computer build in mind with a quad core processor that I need to heavily multitask Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, and Office, something I do on a regular basis. My parents, however, argue that I won't be doing any of that in college anymore, and that I don't need a new desktop. Have any of you computer-savvy individuals from high school continued your computer antics into college?</p>
<p>I obviously will need a laptop or tablet of some sort, but I'd prefer to buy a really cheap laptop for portable use instead of the laptop the school provides with all the software preloaded. Have you found that school-promoted laptops are worth the extra cost?</p>
<p>Finally, I'll be a BS/MBA major, so do you think I'll need two computers in the first place? I do a lot of tech support, graphic design, and video editing work, and I plan to turn it into a way to get a little extra cash in college, not to mention the fact that I'll be involved in a lot of extracurriculars/student leadership roles. Do you think both will really be necessary? Thanks for your input!</p>
<p>BS? MBA implies masters? If you're really into gaming or any performance intense applications then yes do it. I was actually a huge computer fanatic in highschool. I built like 2 computers for myself and one for my brother and my parents. Now in college I dont have a desktop. I still keep up with all the tech stuff but since I live pretty far from my home (i fly) it would be pretty hard and annoying to ship that. I just bought a really awesome laptop (asus for like 1.2k that was worth 1.6k) that can run everything for games and video/music coding stuff.
I would advise you buying a laptop around 1.5k and youd be set. just look around, especially one with dedicated video memory and decent cpu power. also look for discounts. School promoted laptops are not that cheaper than buying it on your own. They say like 15% student discount or some bs but if you know how to get ecoupons+rebates its waaaay better. Like dell sometimes has 30% off with free shipping.
you can build a great powerful desktop for under 1k but if youre thinking about investing in another cheap laptop it might not be worth your while.</p>
<p>lethargytm - I'm in a BS/MBA four-year program, just to clarify.
The ThinkPad R61 the school provides is 1.9k and comes with a 4 year accidental damage warranty and that whole bit. Do you think it's worth it?
Yeah, I've got a pretty powerful desktop in mind with the new Intel Core 2 Quad and the nvidia 9800 512 for around 1k.</p>
<p>Have you guys found that you've continued gaming/using performance-intense programs from high school into college?</p>
<p>I also have both a laptop and a desktop. I don't intensely game, but more find that having two computers saves me time from having to set up my laptop when I'm back at my dorm. Sometimes I need to use the laptop to study with friends or somewhere else quiet so I think a laptop is necessary as well.</p>
<p>It's really helpful if you have issues, as I've had a RAM failure that took a bit to diagnose and repair. I would try for a budget laptop though as it's easier to steal and word processing is not really memory intensive.</p>
<p>no that laptop is not worth it at all.
my 1.1k laptop came with 2 year accidental warranty, regular 3 year warranty, 2.4ghz intel core 2 duo, 3gigs of ram, 320GB, nvidia 9600m gs 512mb.</p>
<p>oh and my battery lasts anywhere from 3:15 to 2 hours depending on performance and other settings</p>
<p>You should replace one of the sticks of RAM so that they are balanced.</p>
<p>I just picked up an M1330 for a trip next week. Main attractions were Vista x64 and it only weighs 4.4 pounds. Didn't want to bring the 17 inch MacBook Pro and it's nice to get x64 without having to hunt for drivers.</p>
<p>balancing ram really doesnt/shouldnt affect the performance. unity, or disunity, shouldnt affect the computers ability to decipher it. the ram thing is a recommendation, not a requirement.</p>
<p>^^ BCEagle, I think the term you're looking for here is dual channeling. 3 GB (2GB + 1GB) can indeed be run as a dual channel. Lowering his RAM config to 1GB + 1GB or 2GB + 2GB will not significantly improve system performance.</p>
<p>Google 3GB dual channel if you want to find out more.</p>
<p>I've done hardware benchmarking before and what I generally found is that lower capacity RAM is faster than higher capacity RAM (2x1 is slower than 4x512) and that mixing capacities results in worse performance.</p>
<p>I read a few posts on dual channel and there was conflicting information. But it makes sense that larger sticks are slower as they have to address more information.</p>
<p>It depends on what you do or how finely tuned you like your system.</p>
<p>I upgraded the RAM on the MacBook Pro to Corsair Low Latency memory. The Front-Side-Bus is a pretty big bottleneck on Intel systems which is why they have to go for aggressive prefetching and large L2s until they start using an IMC. The price is the same as regular memory when you buy from Newegg. </p>
<p>When you have a choice on memory and the choice is essentially free, I like to go for it. On notebooks, I usually get as little memory as possible and then upgrade to the max via Crucial. That generally works out better as memory is frequently a high-margin item at the Tier-1 vendors.</p>
<p>Even though it's definitely not worth it, it looks like I'm going to be getting the laptop the school provides. Don't ask; it's a bit of a long story.</p>
<p>However, since you're all comp-savvy, here's the desktop I'm thinking of building. What do you think?</p>
<p>Processor - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66Ghz 8MB<br>
(I opted out of the Q9550 for price reasons. You don't lose much performance.)</p>
<p>Mobo - Gigabyte GA-EP45-EXTREME</p>
<p>RAM - 1GB x 4 Corsair XMS2 DDR 800</p>
<p>GPU - BFG GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB with ThermoIntelligence Water Cooling
(I opted out of the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 1 GB for price reasons.)</p>
<p>Hard Drive - Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s 500-GB
(I already have 300 GB and two others adding up to 200 GB.)</p>
<p>DVD - existing</p>
<p>Audio - built-in</p>
<p>Power Supply - CZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI 700W ATX12V Power Supply</p>
<p>I know, I know, water cooling is probably unnecessary, but I've used both air and enormous heatsinks and I've still had GPU cooling issues. Also, does anyone know of a reasonable video capture card? Suggestions? Thoughts? Complaints?</p>
<p>I built myself a matx desktop with a core 2 duo and 9600gt that should handle games fine at my monitor's res (14x9) and I'm planning on bringing it to my dorm. It may be more convenient for me though because I'm driving there and I'm in a single this year.</p>
<p>I recently got a tablet too, hp tx2000, just for class, portable studying, and maybe some starcraft on the go. Besides that, I'm going to keep it devoid of programs to reduce clutter/risk of viruses etc. All my music, movies and programs are going to stay on the desktop, and from what I hear, having a real keyboard and monitor is much better for doing longer assignments.</p>
<p>It's hard not to get a Penryn today with the multimedia benefits and overclocking headroom but Intel is currently capacity constrained and can't keep up with demand yet so they are still making and selling lots of the 65 nm product. I read that nVidia is working on or has a license for the QuickPath Interconnect with Intel which reminds me that Nehalem is also just around the corner. I expect to see consumer systems in the first half of 2009. I'm expecting a 20% to 30% performance improvement in Intel's processors with the new architecture. And Intel will be sampling Larrabee boards (and processors I'm assuming) later this year. Larrabee is supposed to be introducing AVX (256 bit vector extensions).</p>
<p>I guess it may be good to go with a cheap motherboard/processor given what's in the pipeline. Nehalem will require a new motherboard.</p>
<p>If your end up getting a laptop, wait until the centrino 2 laptops come out. A lot of them were already announced, but just haven't started shipping yet. What I may end up doing is buying a really kick a$$ laptop, and then getting something like the asus eee or the msi wind to take around with me.</p>
<p>the difference really between 512 and 1gb ram on graphic cards really are irrelevant if you look at benchmarks and stuff. and you can always oc your cpu and gpu.</p>
<p>you know, I'd love to build a super fancy computer or get a great laptop, but I have a very hard time justifying the expense when there are so many other things to pay for. </p>
<p>Now...I don't play that many games and my computer usage is mainly programming and a little misc image and video editing. However, I do multi task significantly.</p>
<p>Here's the thing though. I did extensive multitasking on this old computer for years with only 512mb of RAM and a rather stinky processor. Right now I have my Vostro 1400 laptop with 1.6ghz intel dual core and am able to do everything pretty smoothly (2 gigs of RAM and running gentoo linux). I just bought a 22" LCD which I plan to use with my laptop. However, I will say the integreated graphics are stinky, though it seems to work decently for games. </p>
<p>As for the op's question: I am bringing a second computer. I have multiple packages from newegg comming for my brand new computer I'm building for college. However, I did it on a $150 budget (made use of spare parts I had to reduce costs) and will be building it inside of a small plastic tub (I'm using a mini ITX board). With a 1.3ghz celeron procesor and a gig of ram, it's not anything special, but its more of a hoby project than anything (A large factor in this project is to make my homemade box "look cool"). It will be connected to the LCD screen I have now and will act as a workstation, but it will mainly be used as a server so I can access all my data anywhere on campus easily.</p>
<p>My point here is, unless you are doing gaming, you can probably get away with spending $600 on a laptop or computer, even if you are doing extensive multitasking or running a distro such as Gentoo like I do (where everything is compiled on the machine itself). I will say though, it's not ideal....but, consider your finances and only spend the money unless you really need it. If you want to do a hobby project like I'm doing, you can do something pretty cool and have a pretty decent computer for a $150 if you are creative.</p>
<p>EDIT: By the way, there is an advantage to a cheaper/slower laptop. I can get almost 6 hours of battery life watching videos. I could probably get more if I enable cpu scaling while just taking notes or something. To boot, I only paid about $600 for my laptop and it's a very sturdy and reliable machine (though, I am starting to wish I waited to buy it, as it's almost a year old now...though, the prices haven't gone down that much quite frankly).</p>