I have a budget of around $750 and I expect to be able to code in it. I honestly have not much idea what the ideal requirement of a laptop for a college student should be, which is why I am asking here to get an estimate of the specs I should be considering while choosing one. I would advice against naming any specific laptop as I have no guarantee of its availability in my region.

Edit: Seeing some of the comments, I have decided to add some context and additional constraints:

  • Fit for Computer Science: I wish for the laptop to handle all the tasks expected from the course with reasonable efficiency first and foremost. Gaming support (at least Minecraft) may be desirable but completely optional.
  • Windows only: I am completely inexperienced with Linux and college life, and I want to prioritize my studies over setting up and learning a completely new OS until I am sure I can find enough time to consider switching, so for the time being I am going with Windows. Moreover, the cheapest models among the Macbooks available here cost way above my budget and aren’t feasible either.
  • Newly purchasable models only: My college is offering a grant for newly bought laptops and it is in my best interest to avail the offer to get the most capable model possible, so I will not be purchasing any used laptop.
  • Price matching allotted budget: For the same reason above, I will not be deviating from my budget by more than $100 from either side.

I understand that these constraints narrow down my options by a large margin. If no one can offer something that fulfills the above criteria, that’s OK. I will ask someone else or simply buy one by my own intuition. I will only request you to comment if you actually have a suggestion that respects the above constraints and not just to complain about them.

  • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    51·
    4 months ago

    I bought a 13" AMD Lenovo Yoga for about $750 last year to get through my senior year, and it’s legit one of the best college laptops I’ve ever had. The AMD APU is powerful enough to run most moderate games, I can play minecraft and space engineers fine. It ran Inventor and Creo just fine when I needed to do CAD work for classes. And the folding 2n1 touchscreen tablet was actually a game changer for digital notes. Battwry easily lasts 6 hours in light use and maybe 2 doing CAD. I’d buy it again in a heartbeat.

    Since specific model availability might be a problem for you, just make sure you get a model with a minimum of 16gb RAM and a 1TB SSD. Im now a fan of the folding 2n1 form factor so give those a look- taking notes digitally is legitimately nice. Do not buy an Intel laptop, their mobile chips suck bad these days.