Desktop or laptop for son's university

Quartz · 5 Jul 2025 at 15:28

BUDFORCE said:
I go small form factor PC.

Yes, get an ITX PC in a case that comes with a carrying case (remember the Shuttle?)

danswan · 5 Jul 2025 at 15:47

radderfire said:
Honestly it's so slow trying to make maths notes on a tablet in comparison to on paper, he's better off just with paper.

Thanks. I take it that's from experience? My wife uses a Samsung tablet for written notes and swears by it. What is it about maths notes that makes using a tablet prohibitive?

radderfire · 5 Jul 2025 at 16:22

danswan said:
Thanks. I take it that's from experience? My wife uses a Samsung tablet for written notes and swears by it. What is it about maths notes that makes using a tablet prohibitive?

It's not that recent experience, but the tablets I have used have not competed against pen and paper in terms of speed. I guess some of the newest ones might be better, but I've always found them a slight let down and a bit fiddly. I suppose an advantage is you don't need to have lots of paper notes. These days I'd imagine the Uni will provide him with a lot of electronic notes anyway. What I am saying is that if budget is an issue, then don't worry about it and stick to paper.

danswan · 5 Jul 2025 at 16:25

radderfire said:
It's not that recent experience, but the tablets I have used have not competed against pen and paper in terms of speed. I guess some of the newest ones might be better, but I've always found them a slight let down and a bit fiddly. I suppose an advantage is you don't need to have lots of paper notes. These days I'd imagine the Uni will provide him with a lot of electronic notes anyway. What I am saying is that if budget is an issue, then don't worry about it and stick to paper.

Thanks for the further clarification. It's not something I have any experience with, so any input is welcome. Will look into this further.

radderfire · 5 Jul 2025 at 16:36

I expect a lot of the students are using tablets, but you could just leave it until he's been there for a few weeks to see what he thinks, as paper would be fine to start with.

Gray2233 · 5 Jul 2025 at 17:12

A modern tablet with a good electronic pen might be a good purchase, I've not much experience with them but my niece is currently in uni and uses one for taking handwritten notes.

Craig_d1 · 6 Jul 2025 at 00:06

my son did maths for A level, and going on to do economics..think it's what you're used to. Basically his school ditched written paper notes long ago and it was a requirement to have an ipad for school from the get go, replaced after 3 years. In 6th form they could continue with the tablet or go laptop, which a lot did. i ended up getting my son a lenovo yogo 2 in 1. had a ryzen 7 processor with an oled 90hz touchscreen which folded back completely to become a tablet if needed. comes with a pen too. Think i paid £800. Written notes just never came up, even for revision..I guess to an extent it's how you're taught and become comfortable with. My son looks at writing with a pen on glass as 2nd nature

my youngest just finished gcse's and nowstarting A levels in Sep, doing computer science, maths and either physics or chemistry. we've going the same route for him also, with a yoga..get laptop and a tablet in one..I mean, the whole school is digital now so there is no paper anywhere

So really down to your son, and what he's comfortable with on the learning front..as to gaming desktop..different matter

inogen · 6 Jul 2025 at 00:18

If I was going back to uni now, id want an iPad (for lectures and turorials). I'd use it to record video and automatically transcribe them. And I'd want a laptop with a decent size screen for watching stuff in bed and typing coursework on.

I might think I'd want a desktop but I wouldn't.

I had a desktop (well actually my housemate had one and we had a spare room "office", so that was great) but laptops didn't really exist like they do now back in the mid 90s.

TrojanWhore · 2025-07-13T01:30:52+0100

I'd definitely go for someting in a tablet (with pen) form factor or hybrid (e.g. Lenovo Yoga as craig suggested), especially if he's doing maths/science as there will be a lot of symbols that can't be easily typed/found.
With the games you've mentioned, building a cheap PC to take there (or to leave at home and take his main one there) should be fine, for online games it won't matter but for e.g. solo instances of mincraft etc. he might have to find a away to transer save files (although steam cloud and similar do a good job for things that support them!)

I'd definitely want a second screen in any location I was expecting to do any real work in, but as you said you have that covered then, for me (and with no requirement for high end gaming, I'd probably just build a cheapo PC.

Regarding laptops, they seem to have jumped up again recently but if you're ok with second hand then there are options that would be fine with that level of games that shouldn't cost crazy money - My work laptop is a Lenovo legion with 5800H, 32GB (now) and a 3060 (so not far off a 2080ti), it's three years old so I imagine you could find them for £350-450.

As an aside, I mentioned transferring game saves, but would love if there was a single software that could keep everything in sync (games including which are installed, saves, settings, browsing/file hostory) so you could go between two systems without noticing any difference... although I guess if you needed that then it's probably not that hard to do with a few scripts and some cloud storage etc.

ExRayTed · 2025-07-13T11:19:20+0100

danswan said:
Hello. By no means new to PC gaming, but definitely out of the loop so would appreciate some advice.

My son is off to university in September. He's very attached to his PC, spending nearly all his waking hours on it, playing mostly fairly low-resource demanding games such as minecraft, CS GO, that type of thing. He plays at 1080p, but has got used to a high refresh rate.

He was planning on taking his desktop setup with him (5900X, 32GB, 2080TI), but he's not a driver and we've explained that it wouldn't be practical to haul the whole thing back and forwards every time he comes home for holidays etc.

A laptop seems to be the ideal option, but I'm toying with the idea of another desktop setup which he could leave down there, and keeping his PC here too. He already has 3 monitors here, so could easily spare one to take down, and we have a decent enough case and poiwer supply, so we do have a starting point. What's the current situation with regards to gaming laptops? In the past you'd always get a lot more for your money with a desktop system - is this still the case?

The only other thing I've considered is streaming games, but although I've never actually tried this, I can't imagine it could compare to a decent home PC??

When my daughter went to uni I made the mistake of getting her a gaming laptop with the idea that it would serve both academic and entertainment roles - it was too heavy, ran quite hot and the battery degraded quite quickly. I wish I'd have gone the light laptop/light gaming desktop combo, wouldn't have cost a lot more to be honest. If funds permit, that's the route I'd take.