How to buy laptop for computer science?(2018 Buying Guide)

Selecting a Laptop for CS Student

If you are a computer science student or IT professional, you ought to buy a laptop that meets your requirements to a greater extent. The bigger you get into this research the more confusion arises. If you are a tech enthusiast then you ought to buy a laptop that can harness maximum resources available.

Ultimately, since you are a CS student, you have to do considerable time in some sort of coding. Computer Science is itself a diverse field and you need to be exactly specified what all requirements your laptop should have. It can range from Video Editing, Competitive Programming, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning to Game Development. If you are interested in GPU Processing and High-level Programming than your laptop should be having high computational power.

Having a dedicated graphics card is not much important unless you are intended to do high-level game programming.

Beforehand, you need to decide which type of operating system you intend to use.

Here we will shortlist a comparison between Windows, Linux, and Mac Operating system.

• Windows: If you are a student who is not deeply engaged in Coding and who prefer friendliness over resource utilization, then surely you should go for Windows. If you need a laptop for android app development or some sort of video editing or for web development you can go for Windows.
• Linux: Linux operating system is powerful. Most of them are more focused on getting things and harnessing the computer resources with minute optimization done than being friendly to the user. Highly productive Linux setups can run stable for years without even a reboot. Because of this and because the user as complete control over software, they are used by high tech people for web servers, programming workstations, and any other environment where you need a computer that can be stable for ages and that allows you to resolve an issue if there is one. This ensures stability over ease.
• Mac: This Operating System Apple is used for Apple tailored applications so it will be rid of bugs.

Now let’s discuss some of the important factors in detail:

Processor:  Intel i5 or i7 

i5 or i7 is comparatively the same on some parameters with i7 being little advanced. But on a broader scale, it does not matter a lot.

RAM 

If you want to use  GPU Programming this again will be very useful if you will be using high RAM applications. For example, Visual Studio Code, a very powerful code editor works best with 8+ GB RAM.

3.Graphics Card:

Graphic card comes in very handy in a lot of situations. Your games won’t lag and also, image processing will be very fast. For GPU, you need to use CUDA software which is supported by  Nvidia Graphics Card. Also training machine learning/deep learning algorithms will be lightning fast compared to CPUs.

4. Hard Disk Drive

For Linux programming, you need to give sufficient disk space for the Linux installation. If you can spend a little more, definitely look for SSD (Solid State Disk) Memory also. Some laptops come with 128 GB SSD, which makes your software even faster.

5. Screen Size

Screen size can be one of the most important thing to consider if you are a graphic designer, have the interest to do anything with graphics or gaming. If you are near who loves to write code and execute sitting in a room then have any screen is just fine.

6. Battery backup

If you are a student who takes the laptop to the college or any guy who want to use the laptop away from charging port then having a good battery backup is really important. The MacBook Air has got 10+ hours of battery backup which you should look into.

8. The weight of the laptop

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The weight of the laptop matters only if you are someone who carries it here and there. If you are a student OR an employee carries a bag then you should definitely get a laptop which is lightweight.

If you are buying a laptop for general purpose, net browsing then getting a Chromebook can be a good idea.. but, if you are someone who plans to do some heavy work, graphic designing, gaming, high workload usage then getting a high configuration laptop with latest specs will be recommended.

7. Purpose of Buying a Laptop

This is one of the underrated thing laptops reviewer, gadget reviewers do not talk about. You should buy something which you really want to OR have to use. You should always get a product which fulfils your requirement independent of which company has designed has the fast chipset.

Considering the purpose of usage and buying the component you need will be a smart move. It will save you thousands of rupees and will help you to get things done.

Hope this article helps you in selecting a good quality laptop for your college without spending a lot of money but getting the right product.

Thus keep in mind the above-mentioned points and chooses a laptop that suits your requirements.

Resources: 

Best laptop list for people in Canada by whatbestincanada