Solved Best Laptop currently

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Hey guys. I am looking for a new laptop but I'm not sure which brand is the most efficient and just the best overall. Which laptop would be best for a college student, but also someone who does a lot of IT work. Try to be unbiased. also take into consideration that I use my laptop a lot so it has to be durable as well.

Also I want an effiecient workstation as well so imput on that would be extremely helpful as well. Again, I use my computers a lot because i am the family IT guy so take that into consideration when suggesting the best laptops and the best workstations

@Gerald-Taylor said in Best Laptop currently:

Hey guys. I am looking for a new laptop but I'm not sure which brand is the most efficient and just the best overall. Which laptop would be best for a college student, but also someone who does a lot of IT work. Try to be unbiased. also take into consideration that I use my laptop a lot so it has to be durable as well.

Here is where cost comes into play as well as the purpose of the laptop. It would be ideal if cost never became a factor in our decisions for "best." But in the case of laptops, there is always that direct connection.

From what you're listing as your purpose, I would consider at a minimum a 15" screen, 8 GB of RAM (I would recommend 16 GB) and an SSD (min 256GB) with 1GB RAM for video too and a good case. This is the starting point...if money is not really a consideration.

Personally, I would suggest looking for a Macbook Pro with the specs above or better. Here's my reason. The hardware is spot on for performance and you have the ability to run Windows in bootcamp. This gives you the ability to run Windows as well as Mac OS X . The Time Machine backup is simple and intuitive ( I used this with a 2TB USB drive and I get hourly, daily, weekly backups for as much diskspace as I have. This will essentially allow you to run two laptops on one machine (unix-based OSX and a Windows machine)

Ok..hopefully everyone else will jump in and provide their opinions too!

Hey @Gerald-Taylor

I would consider a few factors or attributes when purchasing a laptop:

What performance do you need
When you say “IT work” then I assume this means troubleshooting and configuring settings on other people computers. For this sole purpose, i.e. helping others you do not need a lot of power/performance. However when you add design and school work into the mix by being a college student now we need a little more kick. So lets talk processors

Processing Power
Intel iSeries
i3- average processing power but might be lacking when you have a lot of applications open and active at once. Priced reasonably lower in the iSeries CPUs

i5- very well rounded (OK processors are square…lol) processor with good overall performance but might lack in CAD-based programs and gaming. Midrange price and great price for the power

i7- the best of the best for graphics intensive gaming and design. Can be very pricey.

Memory

Users want to have more applications open at a single time so memory is extremely important. I personally would not consider a laptop with anything less that 8GB of RAM and honestly 16-24GB is ideal. Here is what I would look at:

16-24GB of DDR3 1600-1800 MHz.

However any speed beyond 1800 MHz is nice as it gives your processor the ability to perform for efficiently. Also if you can get:

16-24GB DDR4 1600-1800 MHz this would be the best but would increase the price as newer standards always do. DDR4 does not really increase the speed as DDR4 lowers the power requirements with the same performance of DDR3 which in turn allows you greater battery life.

Storage:

HDDs in the 500GB to 1TB range are nice for simple storage and the price point. These however are lower the performance.

SSDs in the 256 GB-320GB range are the best for performance however they do increase the cost.

Ideally you might be able to find a system that allows for two drives giving you the ability to add traditional HDDs for data storage at a lower price and an SSD for the operating systems and applications.

Onboard graphics

Make sure that the onboard graphics controller has enough processing power and memory available. You should look at 1GB and higher as this helps to offload that work from you CPU

The Display

HD output is ideal however not always required.
Screen real-estate has to be considered and by that I mean if you are spending hours a day staring at your laptop then you might want to consider a larger display 15.6’ or 17.3’ should do the trick. (Desktops are not an exception to this either. Consider the amount of space you have on your desktop and how much space you need. A dual monitor setup is recommend)

External Connectors

How many different connections will you need:

USB 3.0 or 3.1
Thunderbolt 2.0 or 3.0
External Monitor Support
HDMi and DisplayPort
Card Reader
Ethernet (Wired network)
Builtin WiFi

Battery Life
Lithium Ion

When it comes to a desktop most of the same applies however future expandability is something you might consider and is dependent on how much room you have in the tower/case and the motherboard you purchase. If you buy a complete system then check the specs of the motherboard to ensure it has as many expansion slots that you can see yourself needing whether now or in the future, as well as the tower the system is in because you can add more functionality later should you need to. These are just a few of thing things I consider and I hope this helps.

@Ronnie-Wong Would you really suggest a Macbook Pro right now? It seems like Apple has to be releasing an update to their hardware soon and there haven't been any discounts on the current (old) hardware. If you look at the Macrumor's buying guide Apple computers are in a pretty sorry state at the moment with none being recommended for purchase.

@Zachary-King,

It's this close; I would wait and I would purchase one again. For the purpose of what was mentioned above. Yes, I would recommend it for all the reason I've stated. If you're only looking at price, then no but if you're looking at performance and solid hardware, I would suggest a MacBook Pro. It's not that I had a slouch before, (XPS 13", 8 GB RAM, i7 processor, 256GB SSD). My MacBook is better in the hardware.

I'm a pretty tough user of the laptop, requiring the running of multiple VMs, GNS3 and even a Windows 10 machine. The hardware works well. I don't rave as much about El Capitan but as much as I didn't think I would appreciate it when I got the MacBook Pro, I've now appreciate that I have the MacBook Pro that I have. Also I now have a pretty solid understand of both Mac OSX and Windows and can run a Linux machine in a VM.

I'm sticking with my suggestion!

@Ronnie-Wong Fair enough. Just thought I would ask the question. My wife needs a new laptop and I have been looking into options recently. Thanks