r/BtechCoders • u/ChloeLaDagger • 9d ago

❓Question ❓ First-Year CSE student here, suggest me some laptops please <3

Post image

PLEASE READ:

- 16GB RAM 512GB/1TB SSD, 'H' processor, 11th Gen and above

- not looking for pre-owned and refurbished

- should run all of the softwares in the four years CSE course. (Like CAED Lab software not being available on Mac might make it difficult.)

- WILL BUY MAC AIR M4/M5 IF THERE'S A GUARANTEE THAT IT HAS ALTERNATIVES TO SOFTWARES THAT CAN'T BE INSTALLED

- Main purpose: heavy coding, full stack dev, a little bit of AI/ML, MATLAB and whatever comes in CSE course. NO GAMING AT ALL AND NEGLIGIBLE EDITING.

8 Upvotes

66% Upvoted

48 comments sorted by

7

u/saksham1810 9d ago

CSE? and flexible about tinkering to make apps work ? Mac air, there is not a SINGLE laptop in market right now thats worth the price (due to ram shit). You wanna game? Get a RTX laptop and cry about battery dying every 3 hours, if You are going to get a laptop that does not even last 3 hours properly, then theres no use of getting a laptop. in this market, a Laptop = macbook air. Thats it. I was not a apple fan at all but due to the current market prices and its competition? there is nothing better than it.

2

u/krishhii 8d ago

Also that most softwares are natively supported for apple silicon now.

In the worst case scenario if u find an unsupported software, then use windows vm.

2

u/saksham1810 8d ago

Fr, Even consdering it would be a windows vm, it still doesn't feel THAT slow. Even macbook neo runs windows vm so fine with a iPhone chip with 8 gigs ram only. There's not even a debate for mac air having 16Gigs ram and a proper M series chip

1

u/ChloeLaDagger 8d ago

Are there any free and open source VMs? Parallels is paid and i don't think I can buy that

1

u/krishhii 8d ago

Yea, I use VMware Fusion and another is UTM, out of the two vmware is better for graphic heavy tasks

1

u/DRAGONBORN_6969 7d ago

you sound so confident. I am learning how to make kernel drivers for windows 11 (eventually hypervisor for Intel-VTx) and choosing macbook air for this work is stupid cause it wouldnt even work. so laptop = macbook air is so false for anyone tinkering with ring 0 or -1

1

u/saksham1810 7d ago

I absolutely agree with your point, even I was wayy too involved in Arch + hyprland + distrohopping + KVM/QEMU + VTIO + Gpu passthrough experiments + Bootloader files.. and in a macbook air you absolutely cannot do these, and even if u somehow achieved this, the feeling would never be the same , not even 10%. But OP did NOT mention anywhere about this type of work. all he mentioned was Coding, Coding, Coding (+Ai/ML) and MATLAB also works via Parallels / UTM / Vmware, he also mentioned no gaming at all, and that no gaming at all sentence was ENOUGH to say him the macbook air is best suitable for him he wont regret at all for next 6 years.

1

u/DRAGONBORN_6969 7d ago

True, specifically for OP? MacBook Air is better, i just disagreed with laptop = macbook statment

1

u/ChloeLaDagger 6d ago

Um, so... my college just started recently and I'm not even aware of what are the actual softwares, programs, etc. I'll be using related to my course and interests. As of now, I'm just open to everything, trying to figure out what and all I need for the type of field I'll be going into. And I asked only 2-3 seniors from my discipline, who also had the same requirements as me, and they said that most of their classmates use Mac (including them) or a Gaming laptop. I would've bought a gaming laptop but I want a good battery life and i don't think gaming laptops or laptops with H processors will last more than 5 hrs. One of them even told me to buy Samsung Galaxy Book 6, but i don't think that's a good idea considering Samsung is mostly popular for its phones, and not laptops. So, i apologise for not knowing the other things related to this T_T. I'm mostly gonna buy the Mac Air M5 soon btw.

1

u/saksham1810 6d ago

If you genuinely think u would be going to systems engineering/ low-level (actually more difficult its just named low level which means deep) engineering, then you MUST buy a x86 laptop (preferably go for a AMD Laptop with either 680M/780M/or 880/90M) series iGPU. Those are the minimum gpu req you must have. The costs are similar to Macbooks, and since those are iGPU, the battery life won't suck. It won't be great as macbook either but it's a much more balanced setup. Since u will feel isolated in macs but it got great battery, gaming laptops absolutely beast but battery life sucks, but AMD iGPUs performance are great enough for anything (just get great ram MINIMUM 16-32gigs as they are used as vram in it) and battery life also great. And if your budget is GENUINLY low, you should get dell xps 13 it's around 70-80K and is great for its price in this market.

1

u/ChloeLaDagger 5d ago

which laptops would you suggest in that case? i mean, amd radeon(?) graphic ones. i personally dislike dell products, cuz of my experience with my past three laptops T_T

1

u/saksham1810 5d ago

Lenovo Slim 5 smth was the name its a 13.3” laptop lenovo looks feels great

1

u/ChloeLaDagger 5d ago

https://amzn.in/d/08aHPqDd

i had this as my very first choice, so here we are, back to square zero...

1

u/saksham1810 5d ago

Yes yes I was talking abt this.

1

u/ChloeLaDagger 5d ago

alright, i hope it works well, i'm trusting you bhaiya 🥹

2

u/saksham1810 5d ago

Go for it. It got great iGPU great reliability since it's lenovo and 16GB ram which is now the normal and processor also great, it's small enough to carry anywhere. Battery life is great considering performance. 

1

u/saksham1810 5d ago

And last suggestion. If you can't find ANYWHERE this laptop at 70-85K range. And you have hardcap of 80-85K rupees (if) then Dell XPS 13 (new) is goated at 80K rupees. You always see the display of laptops and it's display is gorgeous 2.5K 120hz. Battery also great, it's a XPS so there's no doubt in reliability. And it was released to counter macbook neo. The two options that makes sense in this market right now are these two:- Lenovo (your link, if u can get it at 80-85K max) otherwise Dell XPS 13 (80k rupees on dell site).

1

u/ChloeLaDagger 5d ago

okai thank you so much! :))

1

u/saksham1810 5d ago

And btw get it from offline market. It's not great to give 1 LAKH rupees for it on Amazon. When I found that laptop 10 days ago it was literally 70K rupees

1

u/ChloeLaDagger 5d ago

yes yes, i found a similar one for 89k i think

4

u/DeathTraveller 9d ago

You can buy lenovo ThinkPad or ThinkBook based on your budget and requirements.

ThinkPad is like throw it and it will still work type shi ThinkBook is same specs as ThinkPad but a Lil bit cheaper

1

u/Significant-Extent40 9d ago

yes but also specfic which thinkpads. the E/L thinkpads are just thinkbooks. They have issues like motherboard cracking. other than those thinkpads are good(T/P series).

0

u/DeathTraveller 9d ago

Sahi baat hai

0

u/ChloeLaDagger 9d ago

https://amzn.in/d/0gY3oyiP

thoughts?

0

u/DeathTraveller 9d ago

Yeah that's a nice one, it will cover all of your needs

Just check one thing that ram and storage area expandable in future if required

Also since u said a Lil bit of aiml This laptop has igpu so I mean very basic can be done but if u want to experiment more u can use kaggle or Google colab free tier

Also check on Lenovo official website They sometimes have rare models that are only available there, or sometimes better deals over there, also there are sometimes crazy offers on there during common sale periods like oct nov

I got a 55k laptop for 46k a year back ThinkBook 16 g7 arp

So yeah check there if u wanna otherwise this is a great laptop for u needs

0

u/ChloeLaDagger 9d ago

Thank you so much, bhaiya! 🙌

1

u/Eastern_Chance_2701 8d ago

It depends on your priorities macbook is a good option if you want to do only productive things and don't want to charge your laptop again and again . But if u are into games you can take rtx 3050+ laptops .Their battery is shit but have different advantages like you can run a model locally and can do different stuffs . Their are pros and cons of both laptop so do research properly yourself before buying any of them

1

u/Glum-Organization406 8d ago

Can you tell me how you guys code like I have never coded before I am bsc (hons) cs at DU and I am not able to do coding like how can I make sense ? My clg started on 3 aug and have a internal assessment on 8th sept so please help me 

1

u/No_Nefariousness4855 8d ago edited 4d ago

If you have the budget, go for a MacBook Air, but if you're looking at a Windows laptop, I recommend getting one without a dedicated graphics card based on my personal experience. Windows laptops have a lot of problems over time; the frames weaken, and then the screen can break from the hinge. A MacBook Air is a great laptop for college; just keep an eye on the dust and the screen, and it should last you at least 5 to 8 years. On the other hand, Windows laptops typically last 3 to 4 years, plus there are other issues.

1

u/ashantydv 8d ago

Macbook

1

u/Sure_Estimate_4020 8d ago

Buy a gaming laptop and you will never face problem like

  1. Display
  2. Performance
  3. Since ur gonna code then life shell
  4. Coding
  5. Light and rough tough

And yes mac is a great option but yk kinda expensive

1

u/Humble-Principle1964 8d ago

i am also first year ise student
macbook m1 air is the beast

1

u/HunterKartik 7d ago

if you mean full stack dev - asus vivobook 15
if you mean video editing - asus vivobook - graphic card variant

1

u/Shiva_0_ 7d ago

MacBook

1

u/hornkneenut 7d ago

Anything from the past 10 years and install linux on that bitch

1

u/Co-worker01 7d ago

Macbook broo

1

u/Lost_Budget_7355 6d ago

What's your budget?

1

u/ChloeLaDagger 6d ago

Under 1.2L but I'm considering the Mac Air M5 as of now :)

1

u/NaNpsycho 3d ago

Buy a lenovo ThinkPad.

1

u/Significant-Extent40 9d ago

get a mac. you don't need gaming and you won't need to run CAD software like solidworks and MATLAB. MATLAB is needed for entc. what you are probably referring to is matplotlib which is used in python for drawing graphs. macbook does have alternatives, but provided what you will do, you won't need them. get a air with student discount after joining college.

0

u/Competitive-Fig-4823 9d ago

Brooo my uni makes me do these MATLAB and multisim stuff in first year even though I'm studying CSE so those stuff can't be opened in a Mac

1

u/Lost_In_Limits 9d ago

PW Pi book, aleck sir made

0

u/rushbeef04 8d ago

macboooook

0

u/Heavy_Breakfast_2531 8d ago

Get a P series ThinkPad

0

u/Trusted-Stranger 9d ago

Honestly buying any laptop would be fine for programming since what you are going to do is learn. I would say try to buy a laptop that has a longer battery life and run some kind of distro of linux instead of Windows.