<p>So I'm an upcoming computer science major and will be a freshman at East Carolina University in the fall. I don't know all that much about all of the laptop brands or what kinds are the best, besides the obvious in a Mac, Dell, and HP. So I'm just wanting a few suggestions and maybe some opinions, since I'll be needing a good laptop that's going to last me a pretty long time.</p>
<p>What’s your budget?</p>
<p>You’ll want at least 8gb RAM, 1333Mhz or 1600Mhz is pretty much irrelevant, as the performance gains aren’t that great. It’s nice for working in Visual Studio, from my experience. </p>
<p>Shoot for the best i7 you can get, depending on your budget. I recommend one with an 8MB cache. We’re actually at the end of the Sandy Bridge cycle, so you may want to just wait for Ivy Bridge as the battery life gains will be pretty significant.</p>
<p>You can save money in the GPU department if you want, go for the last generation cards (nVidia 5xx series or AMD 6xxx series) to save some money.</p>
<p>As for companies, you may want to look into websites that custom build laptops (ORIGIN, Sager, etc…) as long as portability isn’t your main concern. Otherwise, I’d recommend the Toshiba Qosmio line or Samsung. Dell/Alienware and I have never got along (plus they’re overpriced), so I wouldn’t recommend them.</p>
<p>My situation isn’t exactly comparable so I can’t offer much insight in how long you want it to “last”. I ordered my EON15-S from ORIGIN and I’ve already updated parts before I’ve even received the computer, but even before that I overshot by a pretty significant margin. Unless you have the cash to spend, I wouldn’t overshoot too horribly. It’s near impossible to configure a computer that will be technologically relevant by the end of your undergrad time at college.</p>
<p>Eurocom has some nice notebooks that will last a long time</p>
<p>"EUROCOM Racer 2.0</p>
<p>15.6-inch FHD 1920-by-1080 pixels; Matte (Non-Glare) or Glossy (Glare); LED Backlit Display</p>
<p>Description:</p>
<p>The most powerful 15.6" notebook ever! It sports the new line of Intel Mobile 22nm processors; the fastest GPU technologies from both NVIDIA and AMD, including NVIDIA’s GTX 660M (28nm Kepler), GTX 670M, GTX 675M and Quadro 5010M; iluminated keyboard with user changeable 7-colours; internal FHD webcam with 30fps support and much more …"</p>
<p>All you need to run is notepad.</p>
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<p>Just build a desktop. Stays functional for longer and costs a fraction of the price.</p>
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<p>True, very true. But judging from the OP I figured he wanted a laptop.</p>
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<p>No, fastest card available now is the AMD Radeon HD 7970M. Just released two days ago. It beats the 675M by ridiculous margins. In fact, I called in to ORIGIN just to have my order changed to include it. It’s also around $100 cheaper than the 675M. And the 7970M is 28nm and has Enduro (AMD’s version of Optimus), the 675M is just a rebranded 580M from last generation.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m gonna want a laptop to carry around and my budget isn’t too high, but will most likely use part of my loan money to buy a good laptop to last at least 1 1/2-2 years. Thanks for the information guys…</p>
<p>the above specs are completely overkill. i easily get by with 4yr old intel pentium, 3gb ram, integrated gpu. i console game mainly so i also have this 10dollar cable to play xbox through my laptop. the only gripe i have is that i barely get 1.5hrs battery life</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure computer science majors aren’t just going to be using Visual Studio, they may also use Linux, so there is no need to get bleeding edge hardware since you haven’t stated you wanted to do some heavy gaming. But do wait before you buy your laptop because once the Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs come out everything gets cheaper. </p>
<p>With your budget you can probably get a laptop that will weigh less than 6 pounds and will have several hours of battery life. Something like this for $549:</p>
<p>[Newegg.com</a> - Acer Aspire AS5750-6414 Notebook Intel Core i5 2450M(2.50GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory DDR3 1066 500GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi Intel HD Graphics 3000](<a href=“Are you a human?”>Are you a human?)</p>
<p>For at least a year, you won’t be doing anything that requires very much power. I used a 5 year old Macbook until the beginning of this current school year (i’m currently a CS junior) because you really don’t need very much to get by. Most everything will be command line based until you get on to event driven programming which will be at least a few CS classes down the path. Get what you’d like to for your computer, but please do a good amount of research and test em out if possible before you buy one. A good keyboard and a big screen will go a LONG way when you start coding. You don’t want to feel cramped especially when you have code, a compiler window, online documentation, etc on the screen. Its alot of information and you want to be able to get at it quickly so more screen real estate is big + in my book. You obviously want a computer thats up to date tech wise (Techhexium made a good point about intel’s new generation of CPUs about to hit the market), but going out of your way for an extremely powerful, extremely expensive machine that you’ll be doing hardly anything for a couple years doesn’t make a lot of sense. Get what you need and what you’re comfortable with. The OS doesn’t matter, we use windows, mac, linux, etc. Its not written in stone to use 1. They have pretty much the same set of tools on each OS.</p>
<p>I’d suggest emailing someone in the cs department and asking them. Also, many schools will their own purchase programs that come with onsite support and software deals (if you use that packaged stuff)</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using CC</p>
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<p>This is the exact reason most of my CS friends went with a desktop + dual monitor setup. Yeah, it ate up their entire desk, but they could use whatever mouse & keyboard they wanted and had no problems with screen real estate. If you’re worried about two widescreens being too wide you could always mount one in portrait mode which is ideal if you’ve got long documents or two windows which aren’t wide and you want to take up top/bottom of the screen.</p>
<p>Buy an ultraportable laptop (cheapie tablet-type) for when you need to make presentations or if you have to check stuff on the go. That’ll give you massive battery life along with the portability you won’t see with a super-powerful 17" laptop.</p>
<p>This can all be had for probably about $1k, or what you’d pay for a pretty well equipped normal laptop.</p>
<p>How is a mac for a computer science major???</p>
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<p>You could buy an HP elitebook 2760p tablet or a Fujitsu t901 for notetaking and presentations. They should be powerful enough for your everyday work.</p>
<p>@Juaneiro its an OS just like linux or windows. Its a very popular platform to develop for as well. Since Apple stock is sitting around $600 currently, it may not be a bad idea to hitch onto their coat tails lol.</p>