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Originally Posted by burnin_vernon
I might be able to keep the thread title alive with the same request. My wife is in the RN program and is lugging around a heavy laptop for school. Is there something lightweight without heavyweight performance (and price)? The Microsoft Surface Pro looks ideal but is overkill and way out of my budget.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ricosuave
Yeah, I've got a family member in the same boat as well...
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I've gone through a ton of laptops for school purposes over the last decade+ and whatever brand you decide on, don't buy a commercial grade laptop. Buy a business grade laptop. Depending on whether touch screen is required (IMO it's not necessary, just a nice to have), I would highly suggest buying a business grade laptop with i5 and SSD minimum for school. Furthermore ALWAYS use some type of program with a cloud upload feature such as Dropbox and save ALL school work in Dropbox or equivalent. If the laptop dies, crashes, is stolen etc. It's super easy to login to another computer and keep going rather than having to start over. For school, as dumb as this sounds, I also always recommend looking into purchasing a small 4-6 ft extension cord. It helps to ensure that you have longer range to a plug, can share a single plug with others at times and in the event someone runs a cable over, less likelihood of damage and it's cheaper to replace a damaged extension cable for 10-15 bucks than a damaged charger which you need ASAP and will run 3-5 times that amount depending on the level of expedite.
Chrome books are also good for traveling, but IMO they're a handicap in school. Don't get one of those for higher education. Get a good laptop and sell it after school is done. Or just keep it for personal use. Whatever.
My favourites are either a Lenovo T or X series (I own both) and make sure it has a SSD. There's some Dell (XPS) or HP options (probook or elite book), and I've owned all of them and used them all, but I don't have as much recent experience with them and they're a bit inconsistent due to recent redesigns. Those companies also like locking down laptops software and hardware wise which also makes them a PITA if you need to do minor upgrades a few years down the road. Lenovos are designed for you to open them up and do basic stuff yourself which I like (ie: Ram and SSD).
Lenovo X series is the ultra portable. The Lenovo T series is a little thicker but not by much (15-20% more weight and bulk). Both are designed to be a reasonable weight with good performance but also immune to typical impacts and compression from "normal" studying and work circumstances. The X and T series can easily withstand like 15-20 pounds of books stacked on top without breaking a sweat vs commercial grade I'd be worried about 5 pounds (not recommended you do this regularly though). Keyboards are also excellent to type on for extended periods of times (unlike many crappy keyboard layouts for commercial grade laptops).
If you buy, make sure to get Rakuten and get anything ranging from 4-10% cashback for purchases on Lenovo Canada website. Both should be available for around $800-1100 all in before cash back, especially with Black Friday deals going on.