Laptop for students

[johniu676]

Hi! I am student of Grade 12. I am in need of a laptop which can run my college tasks daily. I don't need heavy laptop for gaming etc. I just need for submitting my assignmenets and quizzes. Waiting for recommendations. Thank You in advance.

[xenopeek]

Moved to Open Chat as this is asking for recommendations, not a support request for solving some hardware problem on Linux Mint.

You mention wanting run 'college tasks' on it. It is often the case colleges require certain software or have websites with specific requirements for plugins that aren't available for Linux. Your college may thus vendor lock you to run Windows or macOS for your college tasks. Have you checked on this? Or will you be okay to dual-booting if this is the case.

And what is your budget for a laptop? Will you consider refurbished laptops? What screen size do you want? What other aspects of the laptop do you care about.

If there are some models laptop that you have an eye on you can search in the community hardware database if somebody else has reported on how well it works with Linux Mint: https://community.linuxmint.com/hardware/welcome

[peterhon77]

If you need laptop for basic work or for basic coding then I would recommend you to go for laptop under 500$. You can see many choices in this budget.

[johniu676]

Can you tell me which laptop is best under budget of 400-500? My budget is no more than 500$.

[ivar]

would be easier to give you a good answer if you answered the rest of the above questions also

I'm currently not too familiar with the offerings in that price range but I always recommends business-grade laptops. Less bells & whistles but more study construction, better hardware and usually better driver support

[RollyShed]

It might help to know where in the world you are. I can probably give you a free one if you drop round and pick it up.
Also as mentioned, what are "run my college tasks daily"?

[peterhon77]

Can you tell me which laptop is best under budget of 400-500? My budget is no more than 500$.

If you are student and you need for basic work then I would recommend you to go for ASUS L210 (best for students) (be. It is thin laptop and best for college students. It has good battery timing which is more than 6 hours on hard work and more than 10 hours on normal usage. The only one drawback is that it is not for high level usage like gaming or heavy programming.

[johniu676]

I was talking about laptop which can easily handle programming softwares like C++ and Javascrip.

[jmorris84]

I was talking about laptop which can easily handle programming softwares like C++ and Javascrip.

I bought a refurbished Thinkpad T470s to do programming for university and it was within your price range. I imagine if you went to purchase this same computer now, it may even be a little cheaper. It has been over a year now and it is still running just fine.

[AndyMH]

Second hand thinkpad, T series for a laptop with more options, not lightweight. X series for slimline lightweight. T4xx are 14", T5xx are 15". Mint installs out of the box.

Disadvantages against a modern consumer grade laptop - probably lower screen resolution, basic is 1366x768, a lot have 1600x900. As they typically have 35W TDP CPUs battery life maybe a couple of hours. A lot of modern laptops have 15W TDP CPUs.

Advantages - built like brick sh*thouses, parts readily available, e.g. ebay. Maintenance manuals available from lenovo, active thinkpad forum, mint generally installs 'out of the box'. I been buying second hand thinkpads for twenty years, wouldn't consider anything else.

[Ivy_Pool]

Won't recommend a specific laptop, but will recommend purchasing a 20"+ monitor to use with the laptop at your personal workstation.

[AndyMH]

Won't recommend a specific laptop, but will recommend purchasing a 20"+ monitor to use with the laptop at your personal workstation.

Agreed, my T430 spend most of their life sat in a docking station (as with most things thinkpad, cheap off ebay) driving an ultrawide monitor with a separate wireless keyboard and mouse.

[MurphCID]

My recommendations:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-elitebo ... Id=6490971 16gb of Ram, 1 TB drive, solid build.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-840-g5- ... Id=6458024 Same except i5, solid build.

I am the heretic here. I like the HP Elitebooks, they are well made, business grade laptops. Solid specs, and you CAN update the ram and drive. Good screens as well. Both are 14" which seems to be a good size for college. Plus the HP screens are brighter than the Lenovos.

Then there is this: https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad- ... 160&sr=8-6

You WILL appreciate the extra ram, trust me on this.

[AndyMH]

Of those choices I would definitely go for the T480S, good spec, decent CPU and cheap. Almost tempted myself

[MurphCID]

Of those choices I would definitely go for the T480S, good spec, decent CPU and cheap. Almost tempted myself

It also has the old Lenovo quality keyboard.

We were issued the 15.6" elitebooks at work, and they were very impressive solid laptops. So I have some hands on with them.

[SMG]

Moderator note: Locking old topic bumped by spammer.