Laptop for a year 9 student next year. Recommendations.

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CutCutCut

1039 posts

Uber Geek

#3176109 29-Dec-2023 09:50

MarkM536:
Is there in particular subject interests/classes?

Some examples for design, electronics, computing, engineering classes:

SolidWorks is Windows only (All sorts of classes for 2D/3D CAD modeling).

Archicard & Revit are Windows & Mac (Architectural design - DVC class).

Lumion is Windows only. Twinmotion and Endscape is Windows & Mac (Architectural design rendering - DVC class).

MS Access is Windows only (Year 11, 12 & 13 in computing NCEA assessments).

MS Visual Studio and Code studio are Windows & Mac (Computing classes).

Arduino editor is Windows & Mac.

A number of music processing software is Mac only.

Then the basics every computer can do of word processing and sideshows.

I hope that brings some ideas to think about.

My sincere apologies to my high school for getting DVC department onto using Archicad and Twinmotion when I was there 😀.

25th December - Merry Christmas!

OK interesting, I'm not sure they run any of that software, I'll run it past my older son and see if he used any of them. She is quite artistic, so one of the touchscreen with stylus models somebody posted above may make sense in her case. I'll have to look further at some of those models, I'm sure some touchscreen and stylus are better than others.

CutCutCut

1039 posts

Uber Geek

#3190025 3-Feb-2024 18:17

I thought I'd update on where I ended up landing in this case. There was lenovo models that looked pretty good. I missed a couple of good sales from pb tech while I was away and had trouble finding the best fit. I had considered an exlease model, mostly the HP elitebooks, PB tech seemed to have some, I was slightly concerned about battery life being an issue.

I then had a bit of a brainwave which I don't know why I hadn't considered earlier. I work for a company with 600+ employees, a lot of whom now have elitebooks post covid times, and I have in the past bought a corporate PC cheap from the company previously. So I called up the IT department help desk and asked if they had any elitebooks they were selling and sure enough they said I could buy a 6th gen elitebook for $200, i5, 8GB ram, 256GB ssd. Seemed like an acceptable level of laptop for my daughters needs. So I pulled the trigger on that, nas got a 16GB stick of ram from my PB tech for about $65 and have stuck that in, upgrade the windows 10 pro to windows 11 and she's good to go. It's a got a. Few minor scratches and I need to replace one of the rubber feet but she's happy with it, other than not being a mack book 😂. I'll monitor how her battery goes once they've fully kicked into term time. Looks like you can get a new hp battery for about $65, so even if I need to get that, $350 or so seems pretty good. I guess I may also need to get her some bigger storage but I'll see how she goes for now.

So if you are on the hunt for a laptop for you kid, and you woke for a reasonably large company, hit the it department up for an old one and save some cash.

MarkM536

309 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3190027 3-Feb-2024 18:25

CutCutCut:

I then had a bit of a brainwave.I work for a company with 600+ employees, a lot of whom now have elitebooks post covid times, and I have in the past bought a corporate PC cheap from the company previously. So I called up the IT department help desk and asked if they had any elitebooks they were selling and sure enough they said I could buy a 6th gen elitebook for $200, i5, 8GB ram, 256GB ssd. Seemed like an acceptable level of laptop for my daughters needs. So I pulled the trigger on that, nas got a 16GB stick of ram from my PB tech for about $65 and have stuck that in, upgrade the windows 10 pro to windows 11 and she's good to go. It's a got a. Few minor scratches and I need to replace one of the rubber feet but she's happy with it, other than not being a mack book 😂. I'll monitor how her battery goes once they've fully kicked into term time. Looks like you can get a new hp battery for about $65, so even if I need to get that, $350 or so seems pretty good. I guess I may also need to get her some bigger storage but I'll see how she goes for now.

So if you are on the hunt for a laptop for you kid, and you woke for a reasonably large company, hit the it department up for an old one and save some cash.

That's very good going!

But tell your daughter it cost a lot more 😉, and that she needs to look after it well.

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