Laptop for university??

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stefan9

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Hi guys. I need some advice. My sister asked me to organise her a laptop for university. The problem is I have absolutely no idea about laptops and the different hardware and issues to look at. Generally I have stuck to desktop pc's.

The budget we would like to keep to between R5000- R 8000 if that's possible. Else I could convince her dad to increase it.

The reason she needs it is she decided unlike me that she wanted to go to residence for her varsity adventure. Now she is finding out that things don't run as well there as they do at home. The printers and internet are always down there so now she needs her own computer since she can't get behind with her studies. Studying medicine she doesn't have time to catch up again.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
First off i would advise you to find out from the varsity if she will be using any of their Student programs...If yes, ask if it is Vista compatable...I had encountered a prob like this with a Varsity student who insisted getting a laptop with Vista pre-installed, only to find out he's varsity program was XP based...At the end of the day he had to degrade to XP and this cost a couple a bucks.
 
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Or just stick with Windows XP and be safe. Which University is it anyway?
 
University of Pretoria. She's studying medicine so she doesn't really need any specific programs except word and power point for the assignments and both of them work on my pc so it should work on her's. But I will ask her if she needs any specific programs.

Also what places should we look at buying from?? The usual places I buy from only stock desktop stuff.
 
stefan9 said:
University of Pretoria. She's studying medicine so she doesn't really need any specific programs except word and power point for the assignments and both of them work on my pc so it should work on her's. But I will ask her if she needs any specific programs.

Also what places should we look at buying from?? The usual places I buy from only stock desktop stuff.
Click to expand...

I bought my HP from PC International for about R6,000.

Specs
Intel CoreDuo 1.83GHz
1,024MB DDR2-667
120GB SATA
DVD-RW
802.11g Wireless
10/100Mbit LAN
56K modem
15.4" Glossy screen
 
stefan9 said:
Hi guys. I need some advice. My sister asked me to organise her a laptop for university. The problem is I have absolutely no idea about laptops and the different hardware and issues to look at. Generally I have stuck to desktop pc's.

The budget we would like to keep to between R5000- R 8000 if that's possible. Else I could convince her dad to increase it.
Click to expand...

Friend of mine bought the HP 530 from Digital Planet, very nice laptop and the price has dropped. It's going for R5,820 and it's a Intel Core Duo T2400 Processor 1.83 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz Front Side Bus, 1 Gig RAM, 120 Gb hard drive.

http://www.digitalplanet.co.za/shop/product.asp?StockID=109161

For general email and what not you shouldn't be looking to spend more than R6,000. You could get away with a laptop with less ooomph than the HP 530 if that's all she's using it for.
 
fastesthamster said:
Friend of mine bought the HP 530 from Digital Planet, very nice laptop and the price has dropped. It's going for R5,820 and it's a Intel Core Duo T2400 Processor 1.83 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz Front Side Bus, 1 Gig RAM, 120 Gb hard drive.

http://www.digitalplanet.co.za/shop/product.asp?StockID=109161

For general email and what not you shouldn't be looking to spend more than R6,000. You could get away with a laptop with less ooomph than the HP 530 if that's all she's using it for.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's the one I bought. Glad to know the price dropped after I bought one :D
 
stefan9 said:
University of Pretoria.
Click to expand...

In that case any Laptop should be fine, they only need to use Student Online Service which is entirely web-based, any browser (preferable Firefox) with the latest Java runtime should suffice.

The entire campus still uses Windows XP and all the PC's are relatively low on the specs side (even if they weren't they are so bogged down by all the programs installed on them) so any new laptop will run anything that runs on those computers.

Btw. the Internet problem should go away soon, the user authentication server went down this week which is why it wasn't possible to log in or use the internet.
 
Since the work being done on the laptop is probably mission critical, I'd suggest thinking a bit about backups too. Laptops have been known to disappear occasionally from the UP res places, even with locked doors.
 
Gnome said:
The entire campus still uses Windows XP and all the PC's are relatively low on the specs side (even if they weren't they are so bogged down by all the programs installed on them) so any new laptop will run anything that runs on those computers.
Click to expand...

I beg to differ, wrote my CIL111 exemption exam on an Intel E6750, 2GB DDR2-800 and 8600GT machine (one of about 60 in the room) ;)
 
OMG! Not teh CIL!!! :sick:

Me and my buddy took the first one and scored 2nd and 3rd out of the 500 people taking it on Groenkloof campus (back in 2002 or somesuch). The rest we exempted, but damn aholes demand money from us to prove we dont need it :mad:.

Anyway, for R6000 one can get a decent dual core laptop for your office work.

Just make sure to have some kind of backup method for if it goes bye bye...
 
All her work will be backed up each weekend on the two pc's at home. No problem with backup's.

Another question anybody know of a cheap small inkjet printer which is light on the ink cartridges??
 
WKJ?:beanie said:
I beg to differ, wrote my CIL111 exemption exam on an Intel E6750, 2GB DDR2-800 and 8600GT machine (one of about 60 in the room) ;)
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In the IT Lab or Natural Sciences II?

The PC in the IT lab might have been upgraded haven't been in there since first year which was in 2006 (when I did CIL121) so the situation might have changed. As for the computers in Natural Sciences they were recently upgraded (who knows why), but you'll soon notice they break down quite often and the things are still mega slow because of all the software installed on them.

As for the computers in Informatorium & Costutorium well, LOL still P4's (except the Multimedia Lab might be different, recently noticed they have 7300gt videocards which is better than the usual), not that it matters like I said they are all bogged down by the software installed on them (they run Warcraft III tho :p ).
 
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