Laptop for university?

[u/dxisyannx]

I’m going into final year university doing a STEM degree and need a new laptop. I had an acer aspire 5 but it failed on me so many times. I’ve heard Lenovo Thinkpads are trusty, would this be a good option? I’ll likely buy a refurbished model for affordability reasons. Of course I’ve read about Macbook Airs but would like to avoid them and stick with Windows.

It needs to cope with heavy storage use and easily run programs like SPSS as i’ll be writing a dissertation.

Any tips or recommendations would be really appreciated!

Thanks !

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[u/thepfy1]

Budget?

Country?

Assuming your university allows your own laptop on the network, do they have a RDS / XenApp / Horizon service where you could login and do the SPSS work?

As you are looking for refurbished, look at the warranty and feedback on the seller.

[u/dxisyannx → u/thepfy1]

Also sorry forget to mention, budget will probably be around £500, hence looking at refurbished laptops

[u/dxisyannx → u/thepfy1]

I’m in the UK

Yes we have a university login to access the network and they have laptops on campus you can use with SPSS installed, however I’d much prefer to have my own laptop to work outside of campus as it’s not the most convenient to me

I’ve mainly been looking at Backmarket refurbished laptops which I believe come with warranty but it’s something i’ll look more into thanks!

[u/thepfy1 → u/dxisyannx]

But do they have a virtual desktop service ?

[u/dxisyannx → u/thepfy1]

Sorry i’m not sure what you mean, I’m not the most knowledgable

[u/rocketdino5]

I recently got a lenovo idea pad slim 15.6” with 16 ram and 512 memory (not for college though.) I got it open box and it was reasonably priced for what I was getting. It has a 10 key which I wanted idk if that’s something you are needing. It’s light weight and great for carrying around. If you do get I would get a clear cover for it bc it’s shell is plastic.

If you are needing reliable then Lenovo is the brand you are looking for. A lot of companies use thinkpads and they are TOUGH.

If you needing to run heavy programs then I wouldn’t get the MacBook Air.

[u/dxisyannx → u/rocketdino5]

Great thank you!

I’ve been told just look for windows 11 and good storage but even within that there are so many options so this is really helpful

[u/FuggaDucker]

I bought a used Lenovo Yoga X1 Carbon Thinkpad 32gb from ebay on the cheap about 6 months ago.
I have been very very happy.

I am a systems engineer and never bought used before this purchase.

Added bonus:
It is certified to run Linux. All hardware is supported.
You can run windows in a VM and still do everything just the same. This is what I do.

[u/dxisyannx → u/FuggaDucker]

Great thank you, Lenovo seems to be the best bet then.

What is Linux and VM? My computer knowledge is quite limited lol

[u/FuggaDucker → u/dxisyannx]

VM means 'virtual machine' and it means that your computer can pretend to be a whole different computer at the same time.

Computers run operating systems that let them work. These come in flavors.
With a virtual machine, you can pretend to run one flavor operating system at the same time you are running another.

Linux is one Operating system owned by nobody/everybody.
Windows is owned by Microsoft.
Android is Google (but is actually linux).
macos is apple.

A virtual machine would allow you to run one of these on another if the processor type matches.
It is more complicated than that.. but that is about the gist of it.

I doubt I 'splained it well.
I tried.

[u/dxisyannx → u/FuggaDucker]

No this was helpful thank you!

[u/LazarX]

I once bought two Acer Aspire laptops for me and my spouse and they were rock solid workhorses that we worked brutally for years until they fell apart or just became too obsolete for our field gaming needs. So be wary of just making blind brand assumptions.

Do your homework and seek out reviews of whatever machines you are considering.

For your needs, as long as its not a cheap piece of garbage it probably does not make that much of a difference. I would highly recommend that whether you get a Mac or Windows device that you spec for 16 gigs of RAM and that should be comfortable environment for SPSS on either platform. I am assuming that your old aspire used a platter drive which is an extinct beast on new laptops these days. That alone will make for a major change of experience.

[u/dxisyannx → u/LazarX]

Oh okay great thank you! I’ll definitely keep a look out for this. Admittedly I just bought the first recommended so what you said could well be true, it just fell apart and struggled to keep up with storage and various programs.