Computer Science - which laptop?

[ctrl_alt_del_]

Sony F Series $1400

Lenovo W510 $1800

TIA - Ten years after graduating college, I'm going back to school. Finally getting the degree I should have gotten to begin with.

Both have i7 720QM processors and dedicated video cards that score the about the same on 3DMark05, 06 and Vantage.

I can get both very close in specs and the Sony has a bigger screen and resolution. Also has a BD/DVD-R Drive.

I am trying to justify spending $400 extra on the Lenovo. I can add another 4GB on the Vaio and have:

16.4 Screen - 1920x1080 + 330M GT
8GB PC1333
i7 720QM
BD/DVD-R Drive

Is the Lenovo THAT much better? Once again, TIA!

 

[dumpa]

I'd go with Sony.

 

[dgb303]

I'd save the money for books and get the Sony! CS rocks, hope you have as much fun as I'm having!

 

[juane414]

Do you really need that much power for programming? It's going to be a pain hauling a big laptop to class everyday.

 

[Automata]

The Lenovo is going to be better built. I will literally not buy any other laptop, Thinkpad for any future purchases.

 

[dgb303]

Do you really need that much power for programming? It's going to be a pain hauling a big laptop to class everyday.

Not really, I just use some crappy HP I got for a couple hundred bucks, but then again if you're a CS major you might need to be able to flex that computer epeen :-D

 

[ctrl_alt_del_]

I do have the laptop on my sig, I guess I can use that... It's just a beast, heavy as crap and I wish it wasn't pink. So let me make sure, you don't need a lot of computing power for CS? Wouldn't it compile faster, etc on a Quad then a Duo/Single Core?

Maybe I should do some more research... =)

 

[baris_]

I'd save the money for books and get the Sony! CS rocks, hope you have as much fun as I'm having!

I did NOT enjoy it at all.. But maybe in a different environment with proper classes I would. The way they teach here is terrible. They just say: This is the stuff you have to study. Here is a book. Good luck.

 

[dgb303]

I did NOT enjoy it at all.. But maybe in a different environment with proper classes I would. The way they teach here is terrible. They just say: This is the stuff you have to study. Here is a book. Good luck.

Yeah I've got some crummy teachers that do that sort of thing, which sucks. It's never any fun to just have to read some poorly written book. But the few good teachers I have really make it worthwhile and interesting! :-D

 

[ctrl_alt_del_]

That's a bummer baris - I hope that is not the case for me. =)

 

[juane414]

I do have the laptop on my sig, I guess I can use that... It's just a beast, heavy as crap and I wish it wasn't pink. So let me make sure, you don't need a lot of computing power for CS? Wouldn't it compile faster, etc on a Quad then a Duo/Single Core?

Maybe I should do some more research... =)

I don't know man... my two older cousins made it through CS with some pretty old and crappy computers. I was a CS major for once year before I switched, and I never had to compile anything that would have needed a quad core cpu.

 

[neonblingbling]

A friend of a friend was raving how much faster his codes compiled with his Intel X25M SSD.


Funny thing: He got a completely new machine with an i5 750 with that SSD. To be sure, you better get a fast laptop and the Intel SSD.

 

[Amtrak]

CS does not need any sort of powerful machine. You can easily get through with a budget-mainstream lappy.

 

[dgb303]

You won't really notice the compilation time unless you're compiling thousands of lines of code, even then it doesn't really take that long

 

[Brutal-Force]

Get a dual core netbook. Books are heavy enough, might as well laugh at everyone carrying around 10lb laptops.

 

[cyberfish]

99.99% of the time, the computer will be waiting for you.

You are the bottleneck by far, don't worry about the computer.

 

[satandole666]

Do you really need that much power for programming? It's going to be a pain hauling a big laptop to class everyday.

+1

I bought a new laptop specifically for school. Its so ungainly I just leave it at home most of the time and use the lab computers when I need them.

 

[ch0b1ts]

You do not really need a powerful computer for doing CS especially during your 1st two years. The first two years you are going to be learning simple computer theory, programming concepts, data structures, and taking some basic math courses like Calc 1&2 and Discrete Structures.

All the programs you will write in the 1st two years will be very simple that you can compile on a 15 year old computer in .5 secs. You will likely be using Linux to do this.

When you start getting into the higher level courses you will possibly need more computing power. For my Object Oriented Software Engineering class, we had to create a 3D video game and did a lot of other projects involving graphics. In Computer Hardware, Operating Systems I and Operating Systems II, we really go into writing a lot of SMP code for Multi-processor, multi-threaded, and distributed systems. But for other courses like Artificial Intelligence it was strictly writing programs in Lisp, Scheme, or Prolog under Linux. Very low power required for that.

Today, even the lowest end, new computer will be more than enough computer to get you through a classic CS program.

 

[col_sanders]

I've been using a dell latitude D620 for all my programming work when I was in CS classes. The laptop could handle the compiling I was throwing at it and anything big that required huge cpu times the school had us compile and run on the computing cluster. A cheep dual core would be more than enough for testing and compiling code of that level. Best of all the latitude line of laptops are very inexpensive. Everyone else in my class either had ibm thinkpads or hp laptops. One poor kid had to lug this giant desktop replacement gaming laptop and it didnt look very fun to pack that in there with all the books lol

 

[petteyg359]

Get the highest-resolution screen you can. When you're programming, you don't want to have to constantly scroll and switch between windows. Having screen height to have as much as possible of a long program displayed and width to have a second program or a browser to the page of some API is extremely useful. Avoid netbooks like the plague. You don't want to be stuck spending 40% of your time just scrolling because you've only got 600 pixels in screen space.