Used Workstation for college???

[invento123]

So heading off for college in the next few weeks and unfortunately between paying for text books, tuition its self, expenses (insurance, gas), and having to get a new serpentine belt and steering pump put into my car, my budget for a laptop has gone down to a cool $220 and wont change till well after classes start. Knowing I dont want a chromebook I knew my best option was used for the money I have.

After looking around for a week or so I found my favorite and best option is a old HP Elitebook Workstation. Its got a 3rd gen i7, 256gb SSD, 8gb ram, and is in decent condition.

Now my question is, and preferably to be answered by people who use bigger laptops and carry them around with them, that laptop is 7 pounds, I use to carry around a decently heavy backpack in high school, never weighed it, but carrying that around for more than 10 minutes wasnt fun. If I do get this 15.6" 7 pound behemoth of a laptop will it eventually annoy me both from the shier size and weight of constantly carrying it around and getting it out?

Again if anyone has done this with maybe a gaming laptop or even a workstation as well or uses a huge laptop for work, any input you have would be greatly appreciated!

 

[nkscheller]

I use a Lenovo Y700 for my main computer for school and it is around 5.5 to 6 pounds. After taking it around with multiple books, binders, journals, and other stuff, I have gotten used to it over the past 2 years of college. I will say though you will think of looking for a new, smaller laptop that weighs less, but the specs (if that matters to you) may not be the best.

 

[delaro]

Look into what partnerships your college has with hardware, most all can get you a good discount on a laptop they prefer. You can also us your Federal student loan to cover it.

As far as a workstation goes that depends on what you are doing, for engineering you want something like this.

1600×900 Screen at least 14 inches or better. Lots of squinting on anything smaller.
Quad Core or better with at least 2.5ghz
GPU with at least 1GB DDR3 VRAM
8GB RAM, 16GB prefered
250GB Storage Minimum 500gb prefered
Fastest Wifi possible
4+ Hour battery life... Nothing like shuffling to a outlet in the middle of a class.

For today's Laptops that isn't a very high requirement. Most all those Elitebooks 8XXX series meet those requirements albeit they are a bit heavy to pack around.

 

[The Paladin]

I have an I7-2690m/17" LCD (dell XPS L702X) and it weight with the 17" screen a hefty 7.72 lbs either get a leather bag, with a padded shoulder strap or do what I did for school gets husky bag on wheels and wheel it around.. it s weight will mean nothing. best 30$ spent I think I spent for school, as a matter of fact 10 years later I still use my husky bag for work... its one tough bag.

 

[invento123]

Thank you all so much for your responses!

I have been checking out the specs for that workstation and what inexpensive upgrades I could do for it. Delaro I'll try to get as close as I can to your check list, halfway there now!

The Paladin, I never thought about getting a wheeled husky bag! Thank you for your advice!

Final question if I may, the workstation Im looking at comes with the firepro m4000 graphics card with 1gb of GDDR5, obviously Im not going to use this machine for any gaming really but do you think that firepro would run TF2 better than the intel integrated graphics? TF2 Is just about my favorite game under the sun and with my dads old laptop with intel HD 4000 graphics, I remember it ran pretty terribly.

 

[delaro]

In Gaming a HD 630,HD 640 or the newer APU's would be faster and that depends on the API, for everything else the M4000 is far better. Either are 3 to 4 times faster than a HD4000.