Daughter needs a new laptop. She has been using the same Chromebook since year 7 and is now in last year of A levels so its done pretty well but the battery has packed up and her work load has obviously hugely increased. She will in all likely hood be going to uni next year.
So she needs something that can work with google suite for the next year (school system) and then will last her through university. Her course will be technical science and essay based and any big data crunching can be done on the lab computers I would assume so there will be no need to have hugely powerful processing capacity. She's not a gamer and doesn't need to edit video etc. She does like using a touchscreen and a stylus - drawing mindmaps, taking notes etc.
She obviously wants a mac like all kids but they are very pricey - and I don't think they have detachable screens or fold around keyboards?
Does the mac OS run google suite well?
Any other suggestions or things to avoid? What have people bought for their own children going to uni?
Thanks
Bought ourselves (myself?) an i7 Huawei Matebook 14s recently. It’s got a pretty strong spec for the money and a very nice high resolution touch screen that makes my (much more expensive) HP work laptop look a bit pants by comparison. Should do everything you need now and would need for a university degree in a year or so.
I got my daughter a reconditioned Mac Book Air, and no complaints. Personally I'm not a fan of MacOS and would rather stick to Windows, but it's clear the machine is well put together, very light, and more than capable enough for the things she'll be doing. She uses Google suite all the time and no issues. Not for me, but I'm not the user, just the banker. And I'd be happy enough to get her another one if need be.
Nephews both got Huawei laptops for university. One has completed two years of a degree and one is starting this year. Both seem to like them and the one linked above looks like a great spec.
Any laptop with a web browser will be able to run the Google suite of apps, as they're all web based.
Daughter #1 got a MacBook
Daughter #2 got a Chromebook
Daughter #3 got a Dell XPS13
All doing business and are 2 years in to their courses.
D1 says she didnt need a Mac, D2 very happy with her Chromebook as is D3 with her Dell.
Chances are that a lot of work will be done using cloud services and D2 rates Google much higher than Microsoft after the latter lost 3 days of work!
Just get something thin and light.
Sorry to hijack but I need to get my son a Chromebook for his a levels. I had a look in Currys but nothing grabbed me.
Does anyone have any recommendations?
As for laptops he has a Huawei and it's more than enough....but the school insists on Chromebooks.
I saw a Dell XPS recommendation. My xps15 is great (I got it from their outlet) and if you're looking at Dell I would say use their outlet. There are usually codes floating about to help with the cost.
I've had good success with second hand Dell Latitudes off eBay. You may want to budget for a new battery. Some of them have a touch screen.
Also just got a Huawei matebook 12th gen i7 for my son couldn't get better spec for the same money
You can’t get touch screen macs but you can get really good keyboard/trackpads for iPads as well as excellent styluses.
They’ll run Google stuff fine. The Microsoft stuff is decent for basic use on iPads if that’s what her uni will do.
Microsoft surface are similar if not quite as powerful.
I’m tempted by the i5 version of that Huawei matebook for £500
i5 will be great for us. Big savings as it’s windows 10. Is it mistake to buy windows 10? The laptop might be used by me to run Lightroom and my wife for office 365. Lightroom will be fine fit on that spec
You can run an old laptop as a chromebook. Or at least, I did it a few years ago.
Any old shite will do, but an ssd speeds it along a lot.
First hit on Google
https://www.pcworld.com/article/393375/how-to-turn-a-laptop-into-a-chromebook.html
Although there may be some issues with getting on the university network, that their IT may have to resolve, I'm a great believer in dual-booting, using something like Linux Mint for the main student days. It's a bit of a hog nowadays, but preferable to Windows as pretty virus proof. You then have Windoze installed from specific tasks, to boot into.
Reasons?
1) Got stung with ransomware at the end of my first year. Luckily had Linux Mint on a live USB flash drive with storage space to boot onto, then plug in the problem HDD externally and extract my work from it before formatting it.
2) When on deadlines, Windoze updates could lock my laptop up for ages, or cause issues after updates (fatal BSOD)
3) Linux can make a laptop run faster than Windoze (Linux Mint not so). But then so can a reasonably cheap SSD upgrade purchase.
4) Referring to 1) you can set up a largish USB Flash drive as a live Linux environment so even if the Windoze install or main HDD fails, you can still run a system.
Whatever you do, teach your kids to regularly save to 1) the cloud, and 2) external USB flash drive used ng a logical file naming system including dates/times/revisions.
Whilst you won't have 100% compatibility with M$ Office, sometimes that dual-boot option allows you to boot into Windoze and tart up a PowerPoint so it's 100% compatible with the system you end up using it with on the day. Although you should be coming in beforehand to test everything. For processing a load of images for the powerpoints I would also boot into Windoze to use Paint.NET (Gimp on Linux is a nightmare for even resizing)
The latest Windoze is great nowadays. Runs pretty well, hardly ever fails. But risk reduction is important. No jne wants to fail university, or get lower grades, then be depressed, paying back for it for the next 25/30 years.
If the primary use of the laptop is going to be using Google apps then buying a Mac seems like a waste of money.
Chromebook update expiry dates can be found here https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366 so you can check that the one you've chosen will still be getting updated throughout university.
The latest Windoze is great nowadays. Runs pretty well, hardly ever fails. But risk reduction is important.
A decent laptop with a vanilla windows install will be just fine. There are plenty of organisations out there running windows with even more at stake than their school work.
Sorry for the hijack, but what constitutes a good Chromebook? Both my boys are at secondary school (years 7 and 8) and are using Google Suite, wondering if a Chromebook each would be a sensible move. Any recommendations?
Chromebook main limitation will be the speed and reliability of the internet connection, not the hardware necessarily. It's all handled through the chrome browser and cloud, so doesn't need massive performance chips. You can't install proper windows programs but there are a lot of mobile style apps instead. Higher priced ones generally gets you more features like fold back touch screens.
This is all as far as I know, because it's been a few years since I owned one, I suspect they've moved on a lot since then.
I know they are terribly expensive but our middle son is very happy with his iPad Pro. We got it for him after the Microsoft detachable screen laptop he was using for his ‚sixth form ‚ studies died for no apparent reason one month after the warranty expired with Microsoft offering no help. He’s now just started uni and he can take notes on it in lectures and with the extra keyboard can write essays on it too. It’s so good our daughter wants to sell her MacBook and get one too!
As mentioned above, a chromebooks simplicity means something that would be torturous to use for windows/mac/etc full fat software is perfectly fine.
For reference I have just retired a £130 Acer 15" chromebook that I bought in 2015 that to this day still boots faster than my macbook air. I've replaced it, and the macbook, with a "fancy" Asus C434 (iirc) when Argos has their recent promotion on.
I've also got an acer cb314 here (we are trialling sub £200 CB's.) and there are no complaints so far. This one made the trial list as it was sub £200 from a high street retailer, had a 1080p screen, usb c charging, bluetooth but also with legacy usb a sockets and a headphone jack. Definitely worth a look for your kids.
This is all as far as I know, because it’s been a few years since I owned one, I suspect they’ve moved on a lot since then.
They have!
You don't 'need' an internet connection to do work.... it can be done offline and then sync'd. Android apps are another option as is installing Linux either as a dual boot or standalone.
Loads of possible options and of course budgets. What do you 'prefer' to spend ?
Daughter going to Uni, but picked up herself a 11th Gen i7 with RTX graphics for £650 - Asus TUF 15 gaming machine - she's doing animation. She's also got a 2020 ipad pro she's had a while (bought used from Music magpie).
Other options are refurbished Lenovo Thinkpads - not trendy but very tough.
They have!
You don’t ‘need’ an internet connection to do work…. it can be done offline and then sync’d.
Sorry, yes I'd missed that bit of info off, should have added that detail just after my point about needing connectivity - which you will need eventually for synching and updates, although the same could be said of all other flavours of computers TBF.
Balls to installing Linux and all that mucking about though. The benefits stated are pretty marginal, with the massive drawback that the chances of anyone knowing how to solve any OS/software issues you may run into are fall somewhere between slim and none.
Balls to installing Linux and all that mucking about though. The benefits stated are pretty marginal, with the massive drawback that the chances of anyone knowing how to solve any OS/software issues you may run into are fall somewhere between slim and none.
TBH I've put Linux on a few things and I don't think I've had a single issue yet. That said, I agree, it's of limited added value on a Chromebook when the Chrome OS/cloud services work so well.
'Most' uni students only use their laptops for essays and watching Netflix lectures anyway, so a Chromebook is easily capable.
@roterstern most lecturers upload their ppt files to the university servers after lectures. The bibliography slide is generally most useful. That's on the list of friendly questions at the beginning of a module ("will you upload the slides so we can listen attentively and ask on topic questions?")
My opinion, maybe shared, is that you don't want to be writing or typing in a lecture.
You're listening to a researcher who has a syllabus to deliver, and may very well discuss their own research work. You need to be listening primarily, and then asking questions if they do a Q&A at the end. Then booking 1:1 or small group sessions with the tutors for pointers on reading outwards to ensure you're not going off track, and to get ideas. Selected/guided reading in year 1 makes things so much more manageable as you go along.
Plus, don't need to be carrying that thing with you everywhere and risk breaking it, or getting it lost/stolen.
As above, if needs be you can put chrome on any old laptop. So you could get any mid-priced laptop and put chrome on it, then re-install windows when she goes to uni (or keep running chrome if there's no need to). Or Google suite works in windows just fine too.
Linux, great if you're a geek, you can spend years on forums and the comments section of youtube lamenting that they don't have drivers to run something. Rubbish if you actually just want to run that something.
Windows, immediate re-install to get rid of all the bloatware, job jobbed.
