Laptop For Comp Sci Student

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So I'm gonna need to get a laptop for college and currently only have a desktop. What do you guys think would be some good options for me?
It needs to be $700 or less and also fairly decent for coding, and maybe some light gaming(if possible).
Well, your first decision should be required screen size and resolution. Second, total weight. Third, keyboard style (chiclet or full).
Bring your desktop to college, or at least buy/bring a nice big monitor and a nice comfy keyboard to attach to your laptop.

Yes, it's a pain in the ass to move that stuff around. But if you're going to study CS, you're going to be coding a lot. Doing it on a laptop screen and a tiny miserly laptop keyboard is a recipe for pain.
There's a good chance you'll be doing virtualization to run weird operating systems, which works best if you have a lot of memory.
If you're already admitted somewhere, you may want to see what they recommend, and if they ever have any sales or deals.
iljitsch wrote:

And if you have any thought about developing mobile applications, you'll want to develop for iOS (among others) which means you'll need to run the Apple developer tools which means you'll need a Mac. There's the hackintosh route, but I don't know how reliable a solution that would be, long-term.

Sell a kidney and get a MacBook Pro.
What you will need is going to depend a lot on your school's CS program. I went to RIT and our CS program was heavily Unix (Solaris and eventually Linux, though I did graduate in 2001, so it's probably different by now). What you had for a laptop/desktop was irrelevant because you just connected to the school's systems to do your development. You just needed an X server (no problem if you run Linux, there are free X servers for Windows, and XQuartz/X11 for OS X).

However, if they're heavy on Windows development, then you'll need Windows and the computer's performance for most of your CS projects for the first few years won't matter (since everything you'll be working on will be relatively simple).

On top of that, if they have special requirements, they will probably have the hardware and software that you need in labs and you can just use those.

As TheSpike said, you really need to talk to your school to see what they recommend and also if they have any deals.

I also agree with Alamout, if you already have a recent desktop with a large monitor, bring that (assuming you have the space for it) and pick up a low powered laptop with good battery life for mobile computing, but do most of your work on the desktop. However, if you can't bring the desktop, then I agree with chalex that you should find the most comfortable laptop you can in your price range... large, easily readable screen and comfortable keyboard because you will probably spend a lot of time in front of it.
Your school will have labs you'll use. About anything will work.
++ on 2 points (you'll soon know what ++ means grasshopper!):

1) For working at home get a keyboard and mouse and a decent sized external monitor (22" should do it) so you have lots of screen real estate and decent ergonomics

2) Look into what your school has/what your program covers. I went to a school that was Java/C so OS wasn't a huge deal but most labs were Windows so it helped to have a Windows PC for familiarity and consistency (used the exact same JRE/compilers/emulators that the instructors designed work around)
I think the one coherent lesson from the posts so far is that CS programs vary wildly from school to school (seriously, you needed to do a lot of virtualization in undergrad?).

So the first step should be to figure out the program expectations. At the very least, try to figure out what the first year of courses will require you to run, and make sure you can run that. Needing to use lab computers to do all your assignments would be miserable, I don't recommend it.
I'm very impressed with my Toshiba Satellite R830. Something like it would have been very welcome as a student; i5 2410 is enough CPU, matte screen, all day battery, you might want a little more GPU - but try to avoid gaming as a student; it's a bit of a waste of the meeting people, doing odd stuff and drinking time.
It's really difficult to answer this question without knowing what resources and expectations your department has, as others have said. I went to UIUC and did basically all my work remotely in *nix. The only exception was Graphics, where I'm pretty sure I compiled in Windows though I don't recall the development environment (Eclipse, maybe?). In any event, the most crucial resource was monitor real estate.
It definitely depends upon where you are going. I finished a CS degree 2 years ago, and I never once coded in Windows. It was almost all in linux (with small bits in Solaris). YMMV.
1. Check your program requirements.
2. Check and see if your school has any arrangements with computer vendors. You may be able to get more machine for less money this way.
3. Check and see what your school can support/service and get something on that list.
4. There is no 4.
Yeah, every school has requirements/recommendations.

You should be able to get a deal through them as well although I doubt it would be the most glorious laptop.

You may be able to finance the laptop into your tuition.
I did a CIS program with some programming.

You needed access to the mainframe for cobol. Everyone used the lab. Especially since you would print out your best result code 2 minutes before class.
Only Java was something you could code at home and the version requirement annoyance means most people used the lab.
Any software that was too expensive to buy (Who buys Visio just for one course?) you went to the lab to use.

I spent most time in the lab doing programming than not. It was also helpful since you ended up with other people around to give tips.

these days I'd say to get a Mac + virtualization. You can do *nix, Apple, and Windows all on the same machine. Given how many iOS courses there are appearing it gives you flexibility. Also, Apple on campus is hugely supported.
You needed access to the mainframe for cobol.

:D: I think perhaps CS programs have changed since you graduated.
I wonder if Colin82c6 forgot about this thread. :)
Alamout wrote:
You needed access to the mainframe for cobol.


Not much... I graduated 5 - 6 years ago and I still had to connect to a server to upload and run my COBOL shit. That was only for one class but still
There are also massive differences (usually) between a Computer Science program, a Computer Information Science program, and a Computer Programming program. Without the OP coming back and enlightening us, it's all just speculation. :)
WTF, Cobol?

Happy to go to school I went to... By order of amount of use, here are languages used in classes: C, C++, Java, Haskell, (Professor written language here), Python, Scala.
I graduated from a Computer Science program in 2001 and our languages were taught in this order:

  • Eiffel: object oriented language, loosely based on Smalltalk. They started with that in order to teach the principles of OO programming. They started using Java for that in my last year there.
  • C++: Moved to C++ for more "real world" programming
  • C: For my scientific applications programming class and then my systems programming classes
  • Java
  • Snobol: Obscure string parsing language in my Programming language concepts class

  • LISP: Also in my PLC class, but they used it for the AI class as well
This laptop was a good purchase for me. It has decent specs, ok with games and has a nice build to it. The battery life isn't too spectacular though.
I recently picked up a C2D Thinkpad X60 for $150. That and popped in my old 80gb Intel SSD, and tossed on Ubuntu (11.10).

Super sweet, except slightly low battery life. And programming friendly with the trackpoint kb and all. d:

tiny miserly laptop keyboard is a recipe for pain.

Thinkpad KBs are super nice. Hardly a pain to use. Even on the 12 and 13" models.
24 posts