For those of you who are buying (or DS/DD is buying), what are the specs of the computers you are buying? Processor, memory, hard drive, etc?
I suppose most or all are buying laptops?
If you are buying for a college student…you need to,see what THAT student requirements are.
I have a Microsoft Surface Book (1st gen) with 8 GB RAM, a discrete GPU, i5 processor, 256 GB SSD. Its a midrange surface book (I upped the specs a little because I wanted to be able to run SolidWorks) but I got like $300 off Microsoft’s list price by taking advantage of a couple best buy deals. My favorite thing about my laptop is the fact that I can take handwritten notes on it, which is really helpful for math and science classes. I also get all my textbooks as pdfs or ebooks which really cuts down on weight because I’m a commuter student and do most of my homework not at home.
Look here rather than recreate the discussion.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1934689-reliable-dell-laptop-for-college.html
This is what I have: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-envy-17-3-touch-screen-laptop-intel-core-i7-16gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-natural-silver/5617100.p?skuId=5617100
I like it. I wish I would’ve gotten the smaller screen though.
D is in the hunt, the primary criteria seem to be something that can withstand a beating and has a fairly large screen. She liked her ASUS, but it has not stood up well to the whipping it takes. 3-1/2 years.
My son got a MS Surface. He uses it as his notebook for class. Like snowfairy137 he takes notes on it with the Surface Pen. He is a science student, so draws diagrams. Other son also used a Surface in college as well as a Macbook Pro.
I’m a fan of the 13.3" HP Spectre x360 laptops. D18 has had one for over a year and has held up well. BestBuy has several of the older models on sale right now (with the 6th gen Intel core CPUs). They also have a big sale on the 15.6" version ($350 off).
My kids are liberal arts types who mostly stress their laptops by keeping about a thousand tabs open on their computers. I had to replace a laptop this fall. My impression is that while PC’s usually give you more bang for the buck than Macs, they are more vulnerable to hardware failures. D2 was adamant that she didn’t want a Mac, so I got her a Dell Inspiron 5000 series laptop. The touch screen failed after about 3 weeks, and I contacted Amazon and they exchanged it for me. However, it’s a nice serviceable light-weight laptop with decent battery life and a moderate price for an ultrabook. I try to get a laptop with a 256 GB solid state drive (faster and less battery drain than a regular hard drive but tough if you need storage for videos), the most recent Intel i5 processor (each generation usually gets a bit more efficient – i7 is the most powerful but uses more battery and is overkill for us) ), and at least 8 GB of RAM. This makes it less likely that the laptop will become obsolete. I don’t think there’s any truly reliable PC available for any money, though. D1 has a year-old Asus, and I just read that lots of people are having hinges crack on the laptop cases within a year. Whatever you get, consider dorm insurance. I use NSSI, but there’s at least one other major company that sells it. They cover accidental damage and theft for property including electronics no matter where your student is living as long as they are enrolled in school. D1 had a claim for a cracked laptop screen and they replaced it and overnighted it to us in a week.
Bought it on sale for $699 and my college student downloaded Microsoft Office at no charge from her school’s IT website.
I am the college student! (Non-traditional, part time). It’s been 10 years since I’ve bought a computer and I’m doing my research to figure out what others are using.
It also depends on what you are using it for, if you are talking things like word processing or running a spreadsheet, it will be different than if you are doing stuff that is graphics-intensive. In terms of reliability it depends on the pc, ASUS makes some neat machines but my experience with them is they are poorly made, break easily, and they are very hard to get repaired (my son had an ASUS machine that I got a service contract on it, they ended up replacing it with a Dell Laptop when they couldn’t get ASUS to respond to a request for the part they needed). Ultrabooks are small and light, but they also IME tend to be a lot less rugged than standard laptops, if you are careful with them they are worth looking at.
The big things I would recommend:
1)That the primary drive be an SSD, these days they are relatively cheap and they are light years better than hard drives, they boot up a lot faster, and are more reliable (yes, SSD’s can fail, though the failure rate on them is a fraction of a traditional hard drive). Still worth backing up critical data, but makes a difference.
2)Get as much memory as possible, a lot come with 8 gig these days, if you can get more, get it, you’ll thank me down the road. A fast processor is a good thing, but more memory will help even more.
3)Before buying a particular machine, take a look at it in the store, see if for example the screen can be flexed (ultrabooks are bad at this), and see how rugged it appears. A lot of them to save weight have very flimsy plastic, and that IME leads to problems down the road.
If you want a hybrid, the Microsoft surface isn’t bad, and the pen feature is kind of neat or that you can use it in table mode. It isn’t the must rugged machine I have ever seen (I haven’t looked at them in a while, so maybe they have changed), but they can be very adaptable to what you want to do.
If going for a conventional laptop, I have had good luck with Dell and HP laptops over the years, and we use them at work, they are pretty well made. I am not a fan of Lenovo, ASUS, and some of the other brands out there, they have both reliability issues from what I have seen and heard, and have crap customer service. Dell and HP service is not a panacea, both of them are located in India, but at least you can talk to someone, Lenovo and ASUS might as well be on Mars.
I love my macbook air, and have had good luck with it. You pay more, but I have found it to be a pretty rugged, reliable machine the more than a few years I have had it. Downside with it is getting things like more memory is a hassle (macbook air memory can’t be upgraded, it is hard soldered to the motherboard), and as per Apple getting bigger SSD’s and such costs a lot more than you would be able to do on the open market…but I still love it, I also love that the Mac OS doesn’t wreak havoc the way windows does when they update it (my desktop updated windows 10, and for 2 days I couldn’t figure out why the wireless lan connection wasn’t working…turned out to be the deploy didn’t complete properly, was able to get around it finally), and it doesn’t have all the bloatware Windows does.
@musicprnt nitpicky, but the mircrosoft surfaces don’t have bloatware either. Its just the windows laptops made by a 3rd party.
@engineer4life for college purposes, yes, most students use laptops. It’s sort of hard to,schlep a desktop computer with you to classes or the library…or wherever.
Loook and see what the requirements are for your major. One of my kids was engineering…and the other music. They had slightly different requirements in terms of what they needed.
In our case, the music major used a Mac. The engineer had a Dell. she is using her third Dell. The first was a latitude purchased in 2006 and used until 2010. Second was a cheap Dell purchased in 2010 and used by her until 2015. I’m now using that one…and it’s just fine. She has a new Dell that was purchased a year ago.
We have been very lucky with the Dell computers we have owned. Some folks complain about them. I guess I should knock on wood!
Agree that ultrabooks are less durable than regular laptops but portability can be a big issue in college, and usually battery life is also better with ultrabooks. I don’t worry about the memory because it’s pretty cheap and easy to upgrade it if necessary, but I agree with @musicprnt that if you’re not comfortable upgrading the memory, you should get as much of it as possible – 16 GB rather than 8.
I highly recommend MSFT Surface for mature college students. Light and durable and runs everything I need it to run. 
The beauty of the detachable keyboard is that you will not ruin your laptop if you spill your coffee on the keys - easy to replace the ruined part.
It costs more but you can sell it for more when you upgrade. A few hundred dollars back at the end of its life.
Judging by your handle, you are studying engineering ?
One engineering school publishes it’s own specs for laptops, and you can buy them from the school,
or buy your own with same specs :
My son got a Surface Book with memory and storage comparable to the higher end of the two choices,
since he expects to do some design work in Mech Eng classes, though technically the school said he could get away with the lower end laptop. Gives you a good high and low end range recommended by a major eng college.
We waited until after accepted student orientation to buy our kids the Windows laptops they wanted. Neither wanted apple products.
We did purchase with Costco AmEx Credit Card, which was a very good thing as both laptops became unusable within the extended warranty period the CCard provided and we got a full refund for each. Both kids bought netbooks as replacements with spare monitors and a desktop. They found the lightweight netbook (about size of iPad mini plus keyboard) much handier and more portable thsn the heavier laptops they had purchased.
Check carefully as there’s an increasing trend among some notebook manufacturers to discourage end-user upgrades by soldering in RAM directly on the motherboard or maxing it out at a ridiculously low level. Already happening with more recent Macbooks…including Pros and some lower-end PC notebooks like my friend’s low-end Dell inspiron which he now regrets buying on sale…AFTER ignoring my advice to abstain for this very reason.