What kind of portable computer for grad school?

[Deep13]

My wife and I have desk-top Imacs at home, but I am not married to the idea of complete comparability. As a general rule, the Macs will read Windows documents and save in Windows-friendly formats. Apple products are kind of pricey. I really just need it to type notes and display documents. I have a big, high-resolution screen that I can use at home if I don't want to rely on the little one on the laptop. I'll probably also add a small, monochrome laser jet. I don't need any of those "apps" or whatever they are.

Those of you who have experience with I-pads or other computers with on-screen keyboards, are they any good? Frankly, they look like they are more trouble than they are worth with the fingerprints and the small size of the keyboard.

Any suggestions?

[bif]

1. Both of my daughters have macbooks

And love them. I would highly recommend them.

[JanMichael]

2. What program? Do you need graphics?

Or just word docs and ppt. presentation stuff?

My wife just finished, and all she had was an Acer Netbook...but, it was worthless for some of the software needed for online class meetings.

[Deep13]

5. On line class meetings?

What does that mean?

I can't imagine I will need much graphic capability. Really just a way to take notes and maybe write papers. Like I said to another responding poster, I did not know that grad students use their computers for class presentations. The last time I was in school, we were using 3.5" floppy disks and Word Perfect for DOS.

[JanMichael]

7. if you have online classes

chances are your professor will want to use a program like "elluminate." It's pretty easy to use, but you will want to be sure that you have a webcam.

Things have gotten wayyyy more techy since you have been in school; ppt. presentations are standard, and you are expected to know how to use the basic graphics in word docs.

[Deep13]

8. Ugh! nt

[struggle4progress]

3. Go to the laptops section at Newegg and read some customer reviews:

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=32&name=Laptops-Notebooks

Ask yourself how big a screen you want, how big a keyboard you want, what ports you need, and whether you'll want a dual core or quad core processor for multi-tasking. Do you want wifi? Do you care about a camera? Do you want an ssd? What OS do you prefer? Also think a bit about what sort of programs you want to run

Guy just showed me his ipad tonight and pointed out a cool app that enables one to take handwritten or typed notes while sound recording: later clicking on a note would jump to the corresponding place in the sound recording. He thought it would be useful for taking notes in class. It wouldn't induce me to shell out for an ipad, but stuff like that matters to some folk. And the ipad has no connectivity: no usb, no firewire, no rj-45, zip. You won't connect to a projector for class presentations, or to a better monitor, or to a wired network with it

I have a white macbook (c. $1000) and an acer aspire one (c. $250). Both allow reasonably easy upgrades of ram and hdd. The macbook is a lot heavier than the aao, but it has a bigger screen (13" v 10") and a more standard-size keyboard. The aao has no cd/dvd facility and it has a rather small keyboard -- but it has a card reader, which might be useful for some purposes. Both these machines have wifi, camera, and a variety of ports for connectivity. I figure folk are less likely to steal the aao because it doesn't say "status machine"

[Deep13]

4. Don't need a camera. Could go either way on wi-fi...

...helpful, but not essential. Don't know what ssd is. Don't know what dual or quad core is. Don't care which OS as long as it's stabil. Ports? If those are the sockets where stuff is plugged in, I guess I want USB. I want to run a word processor on it. That's pretty much it. Taking notes and maybe writing papers. Since I don't multitask, the computer does not need to. I never considered using it for class presentations. Is that something grad students do these days? A card-reader would be good for data storage.

[JanMichael]

14. heh

:) sorry, you will need all that "stuff." Personally, I wouldn't get a Mac laptop for grad school either, because frankly you are going to need more than document campatibility. If you are doing a ppt. presentation, and you will, trust me...if the room you are presenting in does not have a built in computer station, then you will have to by an adapter for a mac to fit the schools equipment. Most universities are using PC's.

[Deep13]

16. good to know nt

[struggle4progress]

15. Many campuses will have wifi, which may be useful for looking up stuff like

university/department policies/calendars etc, or for retrieving academic papers in electronic form from the campus library. If you get assigned a carrel in a student office, it may have an rj-45 port for wired internet access, which will provide a faster connection than wifi

ssd = solid state drive. Sort of like a usb flash drive but can replace an internal hard drive. Advantages of ssd include: faster than a hard drive and not prone to mechanical failure. Disadvantages include: relatively high cost per unit of memory

dual or quad core = cpu with 2 or 4 processors. In some cases, this will really speed up the machine; in other cases, it wouldn't matter

I'd want at least usb and rj-45 ports; if there's any chance you'll have to do (say) power point presentations, you might to be able to connect your machine to a projector

Lots of schools offer students a sweet deal on laptops. You might see whether your school does, if only to see what functionality is included

[Deep13]

17. I see. Thanks. nt

[CabalPowered]

6. Lenovo Thinkpads

The X and the T series are great machines and will last well beyond any HP/Dell/Toshiba junker. You're going to pay a bit more in the beginning but it will save you cash down the road. My advice would be to customize one and skimp on everything except RAM. You can find some Thinkpads at Newegg and elsewhere but I like to customize.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/products/professional-grade/thinkpad/index.html

[HopeHoops]

10. Are the keyboard nipples still as good as they were when IBM made the ThinkPad?

[CabalPowered]

12. Yes, they're the same

You can now order the pointer or a trackpad, or both.

[HopeHoops]

13. Well they did change them (during IBM's period). The original one was REALLY sturdy.

I still have one of the original B&W ThinkPads. The battery is LONG dead, but it will run on the power adapter. You just have to go through the BIOS save bullshit on boot because the motherboard battery is dead as well. It just isn't a high priority "to fix" item. I just personally don't like Lenova computers. I find them a little "klunky", I guess. Dell blows chunks, but that's always been true. HP makes the best keyboards and touch pads, IMHO.

[CabalPowered]

21. Huh

I never owned a B&W Thinkpad. I have two old IBM X's and a new Lenovo X.. they seem the same. You can buy a 5-pack for cheap. :shrug:

You can get non-oem batteries for just about any laptop. I'm still running an old X with a new battery as a jukebox in my bedroom. Still working like a champ. Processor clock is 900mhz. :)

That klunk you feel is Lenovo's bloatware. It's bad. I wipe the HD immediately and do a fresh install. But as far as bloatware goes, I think HP is worse. I had to de-bloat a top of the line HP a few years ago and swore never to touch one again. I worked there for a few years and think most of their products started going downhill when Fiona came aboard. We used to buy laptops from the company store and sell them to friends, turnaround and buy either IBMs or Apples. But it comes down to personal preference. I hate touchpads and love X and T keyboards.

:hi:

[HopeHoops]

22. The one I had was the very first ThinkPad - 350 I think. My boss later got the color one.

I think it was just called a 350c (really creative naming conventions at IBM there).

We had some Toshiba portables with ugly orange monochrome screens. Damn were those fuckers heavy. Not quite as bad as an Osborne (which I used shortly after they came out), but still heavy. The Osborne came out about the same time as the IBM PC Jr with the "chicklets" keyboard. Silly little thing.

[HopeHoops]

9. 1) see what the software requirements at the school are; 2) buy the beefiest thing you can afford.

I've had great luck with HP laptops, and desktops for that matter. Whatever brand you choose, get the most memory available, the largest hard drive, and a double-size battery pack if it is available. You'll appreciate the extra run time from the bigger battery pack. Most manufacturers offer software bundles when you order the machine. My daughter was required to have MS Office and they had the student version as an option for the laptop. Basically that means Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

DO NOT buy it from a retailer. Go directly to the manufacturer. HP does a custom build and has it delivered to your door within a week. The dv6000 series is a 15.4" and quite sturdy. I've got an older dv9000 17". It is a shitload heavier, but I like the extra real estate and pretty much depend on a numeric keypad. I can use the number keys across the top fairly quickly, but I'm a hell of a lot faster on a keypad.

Another reason I like HP is their "mouse" pad and buttons. They're just the smoothest and easiest on the fingers that I've ever seen on a laptop. That's one thing the retail stores are good for - testing the feel of the hardware. If you do buy from a retail store just be prepared for the fact that you aren't getting the very newest and highest capacity machine available. With as quickly as machines become obsolete these days, that actually does matter. I remember when my P90 with 24MB of RAM was the hottest shit on the planet. Now I've got 24GB of RAM in my tower - and a total of 9TB of drive space, internal and external.

[av8rdave]

11. My son has a MacBook in grad school, and my undergrad daughter uses one as well

They LOVE them. And no problems. No lost projects due to lockups or hardware failure.

With MS Office for Mac, or (better yet) openoffice.org or libreoffice (both free), they have complete compatibility with any files by or for Windows users.

I am also a MacBook user, for the past 2 1/2 years. It's my only computer. It turned out to be the cheapest computer I ever bought, both in money and time spent having to use it.

I am happily Micro$oft free!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

24. I'm a confirmed Mac user, too--They're just EASIER.

I have a Toshiba netbook, too, and there's always something I have to fiddle with to get it to work right. It won't even start looking for Wi-Fi until I specifically tell it to. It pauses things for automatic updates. I use it only because certain clients have proprietary software.

That's the only reason I use it.

With the Mac, I just turn it on, it automatically finds the nearest Wi-Fi, and I'm ready to go. It lets me choose which updates to install and looks for them on my schedule.

I recently replaced an old Mac with a new one. When I started up the new one for the first time, it asked whether I had a Time Machine backup. I did, and it told me to connect the backup hard drive. In two hours, it had transferred all my documents, programs, and settings to the new machine, including even the arrangement of icons on the desktop.

90% of my clients use MSOffice products, and I've had NO compatibility problems in the past two or three years, because the two flavors of Office stay pretty well in step.

I would not recommend an iPad for any serious work. I have one, and I'll be taking it on my trip to Seattle next week, but only for keeping up with e-mail and carrying Kindle books and TV shows downloaded from iTunes in a compact and convenient way.

[CBGLuthier]

18. I was actually looking at this one earlier today

Come a long way in 30 years.

[Deep13]

19. Tempting, but it might not fit in my briefcase.

How many--um--kilobytes does it hold?

[CBGLuthier]

20. 64K

But it has dual floppies each capable of 91K so plenty of room to grow.

[Chan790]

23. Check with the school.

Not because they have a deal with a provider (which they certainly do but you should not take because it's a better deal for them than for you.) but because some graduate schools have fairly strict requirements for technology. They want to make sure that what you're using is compatible with what they're using and does what they need it to do and to be compatible with course-materials.

One of my best friends is graduating from a Master's program later this month co-run by DHS (and only open to individuals with already-existing clearances) where they had *some* access to confidential government information (like transcripts of intercepted internal communications of Al Qaeda from 8 years ago) and where Macs were verboten (under penalty up to program dismissal) because they were not compatible with the required security software.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

25. Check with the school, but if they don't care, a Macbook

will be less of an adjustment than a Windows machine, and if you have Time Machine on your iMac, transferring all your Stuff from one machine to another can be set up easily.

I had the contents of a nearly full 120GB hard drive transferred to my new MacBook Pro in less than 2 hours with no effort on my part other than issuing the instruction.