Laptop for university student and very very light gaming

dordahan

Commendable
Apr 13, 2016
7
0
1,510
1. What is your budget?
1200$ - 1500$

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
13 / 14

3. What screen resolution do you want?
i dont care.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
portable for school.

5. How much battery life do you need?
5 hours will be good.

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
from time to time, very low.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
software engineer programs

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
500GB SSD will be good.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
Walmart / BestBuy ETC.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
4 years.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
None.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
i dont care.

13. What country do you live in?
USA, FL

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
its important for me the laptop wont heat, easy to use on a daily base.

 
Solution
The macbook pro 13 is a great laptop for the sort of balance you seem to be looking for. If you do go with a mac, I would wait until they next refresh their product line to use the newest CPUs and GPUs. For the price, you get very solid hardware. You can use an educational discount to get a better deal-they usually have a student sale with extra perks over the summer. Windows runs quite well on my mac both natively and as a virtual machine.

The Dell XPS 13 is also a great laptop. It packs good performance into a student-friendly package. I would recommend buying a windows laptop directly from the Microsoft store if possible: their "signature edition" laptops lack all of the worthless and annoying software that can cripple a new laptop.

Calculagator

Estimable
Nov 18, 2014
201
0
5,110
The macbook pro 13 is a great laptop for the sort of balance you seem to be looking for. If you do go with a mac, I would wait until they next refresh their product line to use the newest CPUs and GPUs. For the price, you get very solid hardware. You can use an educational discount to get a better deal-they usually have a student sale with extra perks over the summer. Windows runs quite well on my mac both natively and as a virtual machine.

The Dell XPS 13 is also a great laptop. It packs good performance into a student-friendly package. I would recommend buying a windows laptop directly from the Microsoft store if possible: their "signature edition" laptops lack all of the worthless and annoying software that can cripple a new laptop.
 
Solution

dordahan

Commendable
Apr 13, 2016
7
0
1,510


Hi, on which XPS 13 you recommend?
 

Calculagator

Estimable
Nov 18, 2014
201
0
5,110
It depends on what you want for your money. I personally don't care for the touchscreen, but I might go for it just to get the high resolution. On the other hand, the lower res screen is still good and probably gets better battery life.
The difference between the i5 and i7 cpu will be very small most of the time.
I also don't mind prying the thing open to install a larger hard drive: I would probably get the cheapest model and replace the included hard drive with a 500GB/1TB m.2 drive. You would be a better judge of what you like.
 

dordahan

Commendable
Apr 13, 2016
7
0
1,510


i founs this model here.
is there a similar one with out touch screen?
 

dordahan

Commendable
Apr 13, 2016
7
0
1,510


is there a non touch screen that come with i7?
and do you think xps 13 is better than asus UX303UB or UX305 ?
 

Calculagator

Estimable
Nov 18, 2014
201
0
5,110
I'm not sure about the screen/i7 combo. I don't think the i7 is worth the extra cost.
I like the UX305, but it's a much less powerful machine. It is great for the price, however.
I don't know much about the UX303, but the zenbooks in general are pretty good. This laptop is quite a bit larger than the XPS 13 and has worse battery life, but it comes with a larger SSD.
 

dordahan

Commendable
Apr 13, 2016
7
0
1,510


in the xps13 cpu:
i7 6560u vs i5 6200u.
whats the difference?

would you recommend on taking xps13 i5 6200u / 8gb / 128SSD?
i'll be using programs like VM / eclipse / code blocks / mysql etc/
 

Calculagator

Estimable
Nov 18, 2014
201
0
5,110
The biggest difference between the i7 and i5 is the inclusion of the Iris 540 integrated graphics rather than the 520.

You have to be the one to balance your budget with performance. You have to pay quite a bit if you want more performance. You don't "need" it, but it might be worth the extra cost. You will have to decide.
 

dordahan

Commendable
Apr 13, 2016
7
0
1,510


it says the i5 6200u has "Intel HD Graphics 5500".

i really dont know which one should i choose .
or if i should take 15.6 with "stronger" hardware.