New laptop for daughter going to uni help

[stephen25uk!!]

Hey folks

Long time reader of these forums but this is my first post, my daughter is heading tom uni in September this year to study Law o in need of a new laptop, I'm not too clued up on laptops so really after some advice, i'm imagining she will use it most for browsing, research Excell, word etc , then perhaps netflix or the like in her free time.

I've been looking at both of these that seem a good price but not too sure on the 16gb vs 8gb of ram , basically any advice on the ones i have linked too would be great or any other suggestions or advice.

*** NO COMPETITOR LINKS - PLEASE READ THE RULES ***

Thanks
Stephen

 

[MissChief]

What courses will she be doing? Are there any recommendations from staff or the university specifically? Many will say Chromebooks aren’t suitable and I’d imagine you’ll see more MacBooks than windows laptops if recent photos from colleges and university lecture halls are anything to go by.

 

[Thekwango]

You’ll need to remove the competitor links dude.

 

[stephen25uk!!]

What courses will she be doing? Are there any recommendations from staff or the university specifically? Many will say Chromebooks aren’t suitable and I’d imagine you’ll see more MacBooks than windows laptops if recent photos from colleges and university lecture halls are anything to go by.

She is going to study law so nothing too computer intensive like graphic design etc , i'm assumimng mosty research the word, excell etc

 

[MissChief]

If she's studying Law I'd expect there to be Mac books everywhere. So get her a Mac book as well.

 

[koolpc]

What about a decent ipad?

 

[radderfire]

What's your budget?

Dell are good.

 

[radderfire]

For a Windows laptop, get 16GB of RAM, and a minimum of an Intel i5 processor (or AMD Ryzen equivalent).

 

[t2na]

She is going to study law so nothing too computer intensive like graphic design etc , i'm assumimng mosty research the word, excell etc

A lottttt of typing for law so a comfortable keyboard is probably really key - but you also spend a lot of time referencing multiple pieces of text at the same time so definitely agree with @radderfire about at least 16GB of RAM.

I can't remember ever opening Excel once during the law modules I had but the amount of windows/PDFs I had open to swap between was countless at times.

I don't think you can go wrong with a Macbook, I'd probably say if you could get a refurb Macbook Pro (M1) then you'd be sorted. It's all budget dependent really.

 

[david25]

Any Macbook or refurb'ed Dell Latitude PLUS an external keyboard and screen

 

[jrwagh333]

A lottttt of typing for law so a comfortable keyboard is probably really key - but you also spend a lot of time referencing multiple pieces of text at the same time so definitely agree with @radderfire about at least 16GB of RAM.

I can't remember ever opening Excel once during the law modules I had but the amount of windows/PDFs I had open to swap between was countless at times.

I don't think you can go wrong with a Macbook, I'd probably say if you could get a refurb Macbook Pro (M1) then you'd be sorted. It's all budget dependent really.

Yeah, definitely need 16GB RAM for those PDF Bundles....

 

[a66as]

If you do go for an external screen as well I'd bear in mind MacBooks don't look that good with external displays unless its a 27 inch 5k display (due to retina and it scaling the resolution to half for the text to look crispy) so you'd be better of getting a windows laptop if you are going to get an external screen (or if she is planning to connect it to an external screen)

 

[Kohaashi]

MacBook