Daughter starts college next month, need some Mehdvice on laptop. She plans on going into video game design after gen-Ed classes. Can’t spend a fortune either! Thanks!
Not to be contrary, but I don’t advise a mac for game design. Everybody I know in the field from modelers to programmers run PCs without a second thought. The biggest advantage they have over Macs is that they’re open architecture meaning that as a given part becomes obsolete (in a desktop) you can easily swap it out for a better one. This applies to everything from the system motherboard on up to the graphics card and everything in between.
You’re probably going to want to do two computers if she’s really planning to go into video game design, a laptop for class and a custom built desktop for building the video games. Do you have a budget at all in mind? A chromebook probably wouldn’t be the worst idea for class unless you have a list of specific needs that it can’t meet. I know it’s a bit of an ask but if you could give a top end figure it would make it easier to play with specs and come up with a recommendation for a system build. There are a handful of gaming grade prebuilts out there for reasonable money but they’re not super common, if you can provide a rough budget I can take a look around and mix and match parts then compare against a prebuilt and see where your best value looks to be.
Building your own computer is not nearly so difficult or intimidating as it sounds, there’s a list of best practices for keeping yourself from damaging your parts (grounding yourself basically) but otherwise it’s mostly a matter of round peg round hole, square peg square hole, etc. It can be a great experience working on putting a PC build together… together… and it has the benefit of teaching an invaluable skill. I know a guy who made a few grand a semester and put a big dent in his college tuition charging 100 bucks per PC to build them for people.
(Now I’ll go back and read the rest of what you wrote, hopefully fast enough that I can edit this reply.)
Did it fast enough, but really have nothing to add. Maybe I’ll have you build me a nice gaming machine for my Vive, especially if you’ll do it for $100.
@baqui63 bear in mind that’s $100 plus parts… just in case you thought you were getting a huge bargain but I’d probably do it for free for Meh people if they really wanted help, I enjoy building them and you guys would most likely have to pay to get them from me to you so…
I used to build them myself (going way back to when you had to solder the sockets for the 1Kx1 SRAM chips onto the S-100 cards), so I really have no need for such services.
But I will hit you (and others) up for suggestions of what to buy when I finally replace this square tuit; I’ve not bothered to stay current on what is out there for gaming (one really don’t need much of a PC to use RDP to get to a remote server farm).
I am fortunate enough to have been born after the dark ages (sorry! I say it with love!) so my soldering skills while passable are probably mediocre by your standards at best. With that said, my aid and information is free, if you need help speccing out a build come with a budget and a wishlist and I will happily assist!
If she will be living near an Apple store, buy a mac. The customer service is well worth the cost difference. If your laptop dies the day before a paper is due, being able to just walk into a store and get it fixed is worth all the money in the world. Apple has educational discounts, you can usually find out more through the school.
Depending on the kind of video games, she might eventually need a powerful machine. If that comes up, expect to spend $2-3k building a custom desktop.
@MehnofLaMehncha agreed. Chromebook can easily get her through the GenEds, and then you can check holiday season deals and wait for the higher end device she’ll need later, though not a Mac. She’s going into game design, it’s really gotta be a PC. And something custom built may be a good option. Either way, this will give you more time to plan and save.
I’d caution against buying a “do it all” big gaming laptop for both schoolwork and gaming/game design. I’ve gone down that path and it definitely isn’t for everyone. I found that a custom built PC at home and a thin/light laptop or tablet is considerably more appealing. As with most electronics (networking included), you get better performance and reliability out of single-use devices. Since you won’t know what specifications she will need if/when she starts game design (not to mention, building a PC is kind of a personal endeavor. Plus, components will only get more powerful and cheaper as time passes), I’d hold off on that and let her handle it/help out when necessary.
Depending on her performance needs, most college students are fine with 128GB - 250GB drives (only get a solid state drive, traditional spinning disk hard drives shouldn’t even come in laptops anymore, IMO), 4-8GB of RAM, any i3 or higher processor (i5 preferred, i7 likely overkill) and a 13-14 inch screen (anything larger will be heavy and unweildly). Make sure to snag her a backup drive and/or sign her up for a year of Carbonite or a similar online backup service to keep her projects safe.
Dell makes a solid unit with the Inspiron 13 i7359. I’ve been eyeing a refurb on Amazon going for $599. The touchscreen/convertible aspect might be useless to her, but it’s appealing to me for photo editing and media consumption.
@mills I agree with almost of this minus the claim that larger than 13-14 inch will be unweildy. 15.6" form factor has been a lasting one for laptops for a reason and that screen size difference really helps for long nights squinting at pages and pages of code.
Adding on, if you’re at all technically savvy I suggest foregoing Carbonite and backing up to a service like Amazon S3, there are some inexpensive apps out there for managing the backup and storage space costs a mere $0.03/GB. Until and unless she starts backing up massive game project files she’s likely going to be far below the 166 GB level that would be required to bring S3 storage costs into parity with a service like Carbonite. ($60 / 12 = $5 / $0.03 = 166.66 GB)
Also as far as refurbished PCs go, often deals on Newegg and Amazon are not from manufacturer refurbishment, they’re done by third parties and results can be mixed. Further, refurbished PCs tend to be off-lease units returned after three years of use from companies and could have been mistreated in any variety of ways in their former lives. There’s a reason refurbs usually only come with 30-90 day warranties.
@jbartus Great points! Screen size and weight is definitely personal preference. Going off my experience with college users, 13 is definitely the most popular screen size. I’ve had laptops in most screen sizes (11.6, 13.3, 14, 15.6 and 17.3) and 13 is a great place to be for most use cases. I wasn’t aware of the refurb sources, so thanks for that! Amazon backup services are great if you’re tech minded, but I got the feeling that this particular user would want things that were more user friendly (rather than power user friendly).
@mills yeah I agree which is why I added the forewarning about technical savviness. I’ve been saving clients money like crazy on their server backups, they love me!
As far as screen sizes go, I can’t disagree with you there but I’ve also found most of those tend to be in the Apple or Wish-I-Had-An-Apple not the Utility-Minded crowd. As you say, personal preference reigns supreme.
The refurb sources can be hit or miss like I said, I usually look to manufacturer sites if I really really need a refurb as it’s the safest route. Got some from Newegg a client ordered themselves a couple years ago with recycled HDDs inside and HDD cages with screws missing to the point that one of them was flopping around the whole time in transit attached to the chassis with a lone screw.
@emt305 (and @jbartus) also check out SpiderOak for online backup. It is basically same thing as Carbonite, but with slightly different features, limitations and bundling that may end up being a better fit for your purposes.
S3 IA is definitely cheaper*, but not quite so simple to set up and use.
*Unless you purchased SpiderOak a couple of years ago when, for one day, they offered unlimited capacity for an unlimited number of computers for $125/year… I’ve got over 4.5TB of stuff in their cloud and the only reason I clean out the old versions of crap is (basically) OCD.
Suggestion: find out what, if anything is recommended by the college she will be attending. There also might be better on-campus support for something (presuming she won’t be living at home).
I won’t bother to discuss daughter unit 1’s laptop, since her last laptop purchase was ~5 years ago (now, her job gives her laptops and phones and the like).
Daughter unit 2’s last purchase was three years ago (a refurb’d Toshiba from Woot) for her freshman year away. Last Summer we upgraded it to an SSD (totally worth it!) and it is still working fine. Last Winter, she was talking about getting a Surface Pro 3 (IIRC), but she decided to spend three weeks in the Philippines meeting her boyfriend’s extended family instead.
I’ll definitely agree with the people who are saying to not get a Mac. Mac’s are fine as general purpose computers, but close to useless for serious game design.
The suggestion of getting a low-end laptop now so she can do her classwork and getting a 2nd machine for game dev is a good one. Since she’ll almost certainly want Windows for the game dev, Windows on this machine will likely make her life easier. (Tho the idea of a Chromebook isn’t a bad one–the $150 refurb’d Toshiba Chromebook I got from meh last December is a nice little machine, with very long battery life and a great screen.) Again, I’d suggest staying away from OS-X (Mac), unless she really wants it.
@ThatsHeadly Intel HD Graphics 3000 falls far short of what someone aspiring to go into game design is going to need. That might work as an inexpensive going-to-class laptop.
Been watching sales for my sis. This deal is gone. You kind of need to know what you want. http://www.edealpc.com/ They are a deal aggregator got a killer 17" gaming laptop.
All depends what you are looking for.
We were looking for 17" SSD and some ram. The requirements are not cheap and ended up getting
Final Price: $899.99 + $60.00 - 30% = $671.99
I had been looking for several months and could not find anything under $850 that was a 17" laptops with SSD and 1080,
17" 1080 1080 display
SSD (2 hard drives one for storage and the other for speed and programs, boot times) 128gb for OS and a few of your more used programs the 1tb for movies music pictures.
memory (12gb)
Video card can keep up with the one I have in my PC. ( gaming would be easy for games in the last 3 years or older)
DVD player
Lit keyboard
She’s going to need something reasonably powerful while still being portable and having decent battery life.
Spec-wise you should be looking for:
Size: No bigger than a 15" Macbook Pro. For some reason a significant portion of the cases / packs on the market are sized for a 15" Macbook Pro, so, stay under that size and she’ll have plenty of options.
Processor: Intel Core i5 or i7 (AMD just isn’t competitive) Sixth gen (Skylake) is ideal right now but, for a good price, back to Fourth gen (Haswell) is acceptable.
RAM: 8GB minimum. (Office 2016 eats RAM, 30 tabs open in Chrome for her mid-term research paper will eat RAM, any sort of database work she’ll end up doing in programming / game design is going to eat RAM).
Storage: SSD or GTFO. Faster, less prone to failure, and better battery life. Get a USB3 external for bulk storage.
Graphics: You can get reasonably good standalone graphics in a thin, portable, laptop with good battery life; but, you’ll pay for it. That said, Intel’s integrated graphics aren’t the complete joke they used to be so if she can save the hardcore gaming for a desktop, the integrated should suffice.
Nice but not necessary: Some of the higher-end laptops are using m.2 (PCIe) SSDs, they cost more but having the laptop cold boot or come out of hibernate in about the same time as it takes to wake from sleep is so worth it.
At ~$1,000 the Dell XPS 13 and Razer Blade Stealth aren’t what anyone could call cheap but those would be what I’d probably end up getting for myself in her situation (after living on ramen and cheap pizza to save up).
@Name_Too_Long integrated graphics can be… not fatal but it needs to be a higher end version, HD Graphics 3000 as named earlier in this thread won’t cut it. Strongly advise looking for Iris Graphics / Iris Pro Graphics from Intel, failing that HD Graphics 5#00+ / 5#0 – bigger numbers are better except for Skylake chips where they changed numbering conventions to 3 digits, though bigger is still better within that 3 digit range. It is worth paying more for longevity.
I do still highly recommend investing the money instead in a custom desktop and get a basic laptop. Dollar for dollar you get far more bang for your buck on a desktop, plus the ability to upgrade over time.
@jbartus Except for some of the Haswells (4th gen Core i#), all the processors I mentioned would be in that range. And really the only reason I included the 4000 series processors is that, at launch, there weren’t any quad-core 5000 series mobile chips so most of the gaming / CAD ultrabooks were using 4720s. A year old, fully loaded, XPS 15 at the right price would certainly fit the bill.
@emt305 I have no idea about the computer. Can I be the first one to congratulate you that your daughter is going to college. I was the first in my family to actually finish college. I have been ingraining it into my kids head’s from BIRTH they will go to college since it made all the difference to me going back at the age of 29.
Congratulations to you and your daughter and her bright future. Wishing her the best of luck in this endeavor. I don’t even have a gif for this as it is this important - just words.
Thanks for all the advice! As for budget, trying to stay under 1K & after reading all your input, considering getting the laptop now & saving up for a PC later when she gets into serious design. She wants a 15.6" pretty sure. Going to Univ of Cincinnati, Windows based & they provide Office Suite & McAfee.
$1K for the laptop or combined between now and later? For general use you can get a lot of laptop for $1000, splitting I’d suggest keeping the laptop budget low as you can and see if she can’t get work study or something to save up a few hundred to put towards the desktop.
@emt305 Yeah, don’t use McAfee. The built in “Windows Defender” AV is about as effective as anything else out there and doesn’t add a ton of attack surface like third party AV does (I recommend reading up on the work Tavis Ormandy has been doing. TL;DR: he’s been wading through the “endpoint protection” market and leaving a trail of devastation and broken dreams in his wake).
Quick guide to a secure-ish computer:
Whatever you get, you’re going to want to do a clean reinstall of Windows. It’s just the easiest way to undo whatever stupidity the OEM did; and they ALL do stupid stuff.
Next is drivers. It will take a bit more effort but don’t give in to the temptation of using one of those “find drivers” tools. Multiple manufacturers’ versions have been found to have major security flaws. Go old school and download the individual drivers. For bonus points, check the component manufacturers’ sites for newer drivers than the OEM has listed (e.g. Intel for chipset).
Install Chrome 64 bit with an ad blocker (I use ublock origin). There are lots of arguments about browsers but Chrome is the most secure of the mainstream. It just is. This alone immunizes you from 90+% of the exploit kits and drive-by downloads you’re likely to encounter.
If you don’t absolutely need Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Java, or Silverlight; don’t install them (Chrome has its own Flash engine and PDF reader). They’re all giant piles of seemingly endless 0-day.
Patch All The Things!!! I cannot stress the importance of staying on top of patches and keeping your software up to date enough. Case in point: a few months back Adobe released a patch to Flash; within three days that patch had been reverse engineered, an exploit had been developed for one of the vulnerabilities it patched, and that exploit had been rolled into the Angler exploit kit which used malicious ads on mainstream websites to install ransomware on users’ computers.
Don’t be a dumbass. Don’t try to install pirated or “cracked” software. Don’t try to run keygens. It is literally like three commands in metasploit to embed a payload into an executable. At this point, there are free (often open source) tools for just about anything you could possibly want to do; use those instead of pirating.
@jbartus The 1K is the top of the budget for the laptop for now. I don’t see making a huge investment until we see for sure that she’ll be sticking to this major, you know how those change.
@emt305 in that case the computer @narfcakerecommended would be my recommendation as well. SSD optional but worth doing in my opinion. When you’re ready to go for building a desktop let me know and I’ll be happy to assist!
I always tell my customers to talk with the college.Most of the time they have specs for a device with the program of study. It’s a good idea to check to see if the school allows you to bring your own device or they provide one for you. Some schools require you take their device, they don’t give you an option of using your own.
@joe43wv I asked the schools we visited for my daughter. They had cloud storage. This is fantastic if you are not familiar with the idea.
Also for software see if this will work free and nothing to install. https://office.live.com/start/Word.aspx
@caffeine_dude This appears to be associated with Office 365. Your daughter will definitely need Office for School. Typically Word, Excel, and PowerPoint is all she will need but check with the Program she is studying to see if there are any other office apps she will need. Open Office is a free open source alternative she can use, I’ll post the link below, but most colleges prefer Microsoft Office because they will tell you for compatibility but it’s mainly for they don’t like change. Open Office supports Microsoft Office documents no problem but if for some reason she sends in a file and they have trouble opening it they will blame Open Office faster than you can turn around. Microsoft does have a Office for college students called Office 365 University, you have to have a college email that ends in .edu to qualify. It’s $79.99 for four years and includes offline and online versions of Office, plus 1TB of cloud storage. I would recommend going this route because if Microsoft decides to roll out a new version you can upgrade for free with Office 365. Also, check the college book store to see if they can get Office 365 at a discount sometimes they have GREAT discounts on software.
@joe43wv I was not sure if Microsoft Office online had enough features to replace MS Word. https://www.office.com/ I never used it beyond checking it out for a few minutes, and setting it up on my Wife’s chromebook. Formating from her xlsx spreadsheets from work got messed up in google sheets and in her Open Office. (I did not try LibreOffice)
At work I switched from OpenOffice to LibreOffice. LibreOffice has better compatibility with the latest extensions from Microsoft. It is more stable than OpenOffice. In the past when I was using OpenOffice, OpenOffice would just crash and close on average 1 time a week.
We finally decided on an HP special Star Wars Edition laptop. It has 1 TB hard drive, 12 GB RAM, Intel i5 core processor, 15" HD IPS touch screen, NVIDIA GForce video card, B&O Play audio that sounds awesome and came with lots of Star Wars extras. The outer case makes it look old & rather beat up, but she loves it. It has red back-lit keyboard, too. She’s midway into year 2 & has had no problems with it. Got an excellent deal on it at Best Buy, they were giving additional money off if you were a college student. Very happy with the purchase. Good luck to you and your son!
Since you haven’t mentioned budget limits, it’s a little hard to judge. Based on my engineering/design/mfg background, I like the mobile workstations from Dell (Precision) & HP (ZBook) if you can only have 1 machine. Powerful processors, good graphics, yet still (fairly) portable. Refurb/off-lease are probably OK: because of who’s most likely to use them, chances are they’ve been handled with respect & maintained professionally.
These are often available from computers.woot (blasphemy, I know) listed under ‘business class laptops’ and at the Dell & HP outlets.
Example: Dell Precision from woot
Potential drawback: not really sure if they’re suited for video game design
@compunaut second the compliments for the Precision line, also agree with your assessment that they should be well cared for machines. With Quadro / FirePro cards they are more oriented towards CAD than games but they ought to perform a far sight better than a laptop with integrated graphics.
Lots of good suggestions here already, and I’ll save laptop recommendations for a later post, and just post some general ideas here:
Use Backblaze for backups- $5/month for unlimited backups on your Mac or PC.
While I love EMET, and use it everywhere at work, MalwareBytes Anti-Exploit (free or paid) is probably the better option unless you want the extra security and are willing to troubleshoot issues when they pop up.
SSD’s are great, but be careful- I’ve had hard drives die on me and SSD’s, and the SSD’s just suddenly died one day, unlike the hard drives which would die over a period of time.
@dashcloud second Malwarebytes. EMET is great but more power-user oriented.
For SSDs brand really does matter, don’t skimp. Sandisk, Samsung, and Intel are all pretty solid, other manufacturers have been hit or miss over the years. My personal go-to these days is Samsung but Sandisk is on my list as next candidate for review for go-to as they seem to be challenging Samsung for top of the market.
@dashcloud Really? We have only had 1 SSD fail. I am not sure of the percentages, but we only use SanDisks. Are you talking 3.5 hhd vs ssd, or 2.5 hhd vs ssd? Laptop hhd seem very fragile to me. Then you put them in a box and let people carry them around. hhd can suddenly fail.
Make sure you get an SSD. I just worked on a convertable this weekend. Arguably enough ram (can never have too much) at 4gb on Win10 but performance was laggy. The disk was spinning at 5400RPM. Task Manager had some programs using %100 of the disks for minutes at a time.
Why do they put a 5400rpm disk in a modern laptop??? (yes I get it money, but would you ever do something so evil for money?)
@communist I just tried this & the coupon won’t apply. Maybe I’m doing something wrong? I didn’t add anything to the computer your post linked to, just went to checkout & tried to apply the coupon code. Maybe expired?
Okay, I checked out the website mentioned by @caffeine_dude last nite, http://www.edealpc.com/ and they have several interesting laptops. So which would be better? an Inspiron 15 5000 Dual Core i7 6G or an Insprion 15 7000 Quad Core i7 6G? Is a Quad Core better than a Dual Core?
@emt305 My $.02 (might not even be worth that much):
Quad Core is probably overkill for gen-Ed classes, but worth extra $50 on otherwise equivalent machines
@emt305 I am a SSD fanboy, but for a reason. The manufactures know the SSD is the thing to have and have no issues over charging for it. If you feel comfortable installing windows you can money by buying the least expensive of the 3 laptops and then removing the hard drive and install this hard drive https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-240GB-2-5-Inch-SDSSDA-240G-G25-Version/dp/B00S9Q9VS4/ref=sr_1_17?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1468985583&sr=1-17
and installing windows. Get someone to help? It may void warranties.
Based on the 6 listed above if I was to pick any of the 3 below would be OK.
Admittedly, I am fairly ignorant on the workings of computers - I can navigate the programs needed and get done what I need, but don’t understand the inner stuff. With that said, I would stress to you to check with the school before you purchase to see what platforms/versions are supported.
I need to replace a 3 year old HP (never again) and am having extreme difficulty because the school only supports up to Windows 8 and finding anything new with less than Win 10 is proving to be difficult. Like I said, I don’t understand why, but the IT peeps said that I would have trouble with anything over 8.
@dolphinone Newegg & BH Photo Video both have an excellent selection of pre-Windows 10 machines. If you’ve got requirements or something you’d like, tell us and we’ll try to help you out here.
Also, refurbs can be an excellent choice for getting better equipment at lower prices.
@dashcloud Thank you for the info and the offer. I don’t want to hijack the thread with my needs, I will check both of your suggestions and create a thread if I can’t find one.
@narfcake Thank you for the reminder. I have been super busy with classes and forgot. With that said, I have been reading the Win 10 thread tonight, which now has me anxious about the eventual drop of 8.1, so I don’t know which direction I am going to go in. I am able to Band-Aid and coddle my HP along right now…as long as I use it as a desktop…so maybe waiting a little bit might be the best. I only have to continue to baby it through the rest of fall and spring and then for grad school it won’t matter what I purchase - to a degree (no pun intended). I really appreciate your support though!
Bumping an old thread. Hey @emt305, was wondering what laptop you went with and how it has worked out for your daughter. I am in pretty much the same situation. Son started college this fall, same area of study. He didn’t want a laptop when the year started, but now he sees the need for one and is asking for it for Christmas.
I know this is a good time to find deals, so if anybody else has some current recommendations, that would be cool also.
First of all, tell your daughter congrats, and don’t give up. It may be difficult at times, but is worth it in the end. One of my favorite classes was on game development (with Unity), so she made a good choice, in my opinion.
As for a laptop, I have a six-year-old laptop that served me well through college. While I don’t recommend getting a used or cheap computer, I also don’t recommend you spend too much.
Minimum specs:
CPU: Intel Core-i5 (~$200)
RAM: 8-16 GB ($30-60)
GPU: 2 GB ($50-100)
Storage: 1 TB HDD (<$50 will need to be upgraded in 4-5 years) OR 256 GB SSD (~$75) and external storage for files.
Screen size: I recommend 15.6". Mine is 17.3" and has trouble fitting in smaller cases, but the large monitor is useful for multitasking.
Bottom line: something in the $700-$800 range should work well. Spend more only if it has required or important features that cheaper ones don’t.
I love helping out with computer related problems and questions, so feel free to ask more in the future.
We got out son the Surface Book… The i7 512gig one… For performance it is great (he’s a CS major)…he carries it everywhere! Usually tethered to his phone. But, because he carries it EVERYWHERE, he has had to utilize the warranty feature as he is hard on it… But the warranty service has been quick and easy each time.
I loathed carrying around my big 15" screen laptop (now 7 years old?) when I was going to school. It was huge, bulky, and super heavy - plus I lived close enough to campus that I always walked.
When I went to grad school I got a 10" tablet with a keyboard dock to take with me to class. That was one of the better decisions I made for school - super light and slim, and start up time was nice and snappy. It was awesome for taking notes in class (I would work in Google Drive), and easy enough to carry around everywhere.
If I could redo the whole thing, I would have 2 laptops - one a tablet/keyboard (or a Chromebook) to take to class (you can get these for less than $200, sometimes closer to $100 if you’re lucky) and a real laptop or desktop for when I was home doing ‘real’ work.
Don’t forget Dell Outlet sales. They have the same warranty, but they don’t last long. I bought a couple of laptops there in years past, and was always pleased. http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/28/campaigns/outlet
Not to be contrary, but I don’t advise a mac for game design. Everybody I know in the field from modelers to programmers run PCs without a second thought. The biggest advantage they have over Macs is that they’re open architecture meaning that as a given part becomes obsolete (in a desktop) you can easily swap it out for a better one. This applies to everything from the system motherboard on up to the graphics card and everything in between.
You’re probably going to want to do two computers if she’s really planning to go into video game design, a laptop for class and a custom built desktop for building the video games. Do you have a budget at all in mind? A chromebook probably wouldn’t be the worst idea for class unless you have a list of specific needs that it can’t meet. I know it’s a bit of an ask but if you could give a top end figure it would make it easier to play with specs and come up with a recommendation for a system build. There are a handful of gaming grade prebuilts out there for reasonable money but they’re not super common, if you can provide a rough budget I can take a look around and mix and match parts then compare against a prebuilt and see where your best value looks to be.
Building your own computer is not nearly so difficult or intimidating as it sounds, there’s a list of best practices for keeping yourself from damaging your parts (grounding yourself basically) but otherwise it’s mostly a matter of round peg round hole, square peg square hole, etc. It can be a great experience working on putting a PC build together… together… and it has the benefit of teaching an invaluable skill. I know a guy who made a few grand a semester and put a big dent in his college tuition charging 100 bucks per PC to build them for people.
@jbartus Dude! Be contrary! (I am too.)
(Now I’ll go back and read the rest of what you wrote, hopefully fast enough that I can edit this reply.)
Did it fast enough, but really have nothing to add. Maybe I’ll have you build me a nice gaming machine for my Vive, especially if you’ll do it for $100.
@baqui63 bear in mind that’s $100 plus parts… just in case you thought you were getting a huge bargain but I’d probably do it for free for Meh people if they really wanted help, I enjoy building them and you guys would most likely have to pay to get them from me to you so…
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@jbartus I knew that.
I used to build them myself (going way back to when you had to solder the sockets for the 1Kx1 SRAM chips onto the S-100 cards), so I really have no need for such services.
But I will hit you (and others) up for suggestions of what to buy when I finally replace this square tuit; I’ve not bothered to stay current on what is out there for gaming (one really don’t need much of a PC to use RDP to get to a remote server farm).
@baqui63 hey, some people’s children…
I am fortunate enough to have been born after the dark ages (sorry! I say it with love!) so my soldering skills while passable are probably mediocre by your standards at best. With that said, my aid and information is free, if you need help speccing out a build come with a budget and a wishlist and I will happily assist!
If she will be living near an Apple store, buy a mac. The customer service is well worth the cost difference. If your laptop dies the day before a paper is due, being able to just walk into a store and get it fixed is worth all the money in the world. Apple has educational discounts, you can usually find out more through the school.
Depending on the kind of video games, she might eventually need a powerful machine. If that comes up, expect to spend $2-3k building a custom desktop.
Only problem is, the entire Mac line is in serious need of updates. Every reason to expect they’ll happen in September. But September ain’t August.
Get a piece of crap chrome book, then a Mac for Christmas.
@MehnofLaMehncha agreed. Chromebook can easily get her through the GenEds, and then you can check holiday season deals and wait for the higher end device she’ll need later, though not a Mac. She’s going into game design, it’s really gotta be a PC. And something custom built may be a good option. Either way, this will give you more time to plan and save.
@simplersimon
I missed the game development part. So concur, gotta be a PC.
I’d caution against buying a “do it all” big gaming laptop for both schoolwork and gaming/game design. I’ve gone down that path and it definitely isn’t for everyone. I found that a custom built PC at home and a thin/light laptop or tablet is considerably more appealing. As with most electronics (networking included), you get better performance and reliability out of single-use devices. Since you won’t know what specifications she will need if/when she starts game design (not to mention, building a PC is kind of a personal endeavor. Plus, components will only get more powerful and cheaper as time passes), I’d hold off on that and let her handle it/help out when necessary.
Depending on her performance needs, most college students are fine with 128GB - 250GB drives (only get a solid state drive, traditional spinning disk hard drives shouldn’t even come in laptops anymore, IMO), 4-8GB of RAM, any i3 or higher processor (i5 preferred, i7 likely overkill) and a 13-14 inch screen (anything larger will be heavy and unweildly). Make sure to snag her a backup drive and/or sign her up for a year of Carbonite or a similar online backup service to keep her projects safe.
Dell makes a solid unit with the Inspiron 13 i7359. I’ve been eyeing a refurb on Amazon going for $599. The touchscreen/convertible aspect might be useless to her, but it’s appealing to me for photo editing and media consumption.
@mills I agree with almost of this minus the claim that larger than 13-14 inch will be unweildy. 15.6" form factor has been a lasting one for laptops for a reason and that screen size difference really helps for long nights squinting at pages and pages of code.
Adding on, if you’re at all technically savvy I suggest foregoing Carbonite and backing up to a service like Amazon S3, there are some inexpensive apps out there for managing the backup and storage space costs a mere $0.03/GB. Until and unless she starts backing up massive game project files she’s likely going to be far below the 166 GB level that would be required to bring S3 storage costs into parity with a service like Carbonite. ($60 / 12 = $5 / $0.03 = 166.66 GB)
Also as far as refurbished PCs go, often deals on Newegg and Amazon are not from manufacturer refurbishment, they’re done by third parties and results can be mixed. Further, refurbished PCs tend to be off-lease units returned after three years of use from companies and could have been mistreated in any variety of ways in their former lives. There’s a reason refurbs usually only come with 30-90 day warranties.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@jbartus Great points! Screen size and weight is definitely personal preference. Going off my experience with college users, 13 is definitely the most popular screen size. I’ve had laptops in most screen sizes (11.6, 13.3, 14, 15.6 and 17.3) and 13 is a great place to be for most use cases. I wasn’t aware of the refurb sources, so thanks for that! Amazon backup services are great if you’re tech minded, but I got the feeling that this particular user would want things that were more user friendly (rather than power user friendly).
@mills yeah I agree which is why I added the forewarning about technical savviness. I’ve been saving clients money like crazy on their server backups, they love me!
As far as screen sizes go, I can’t disagree with you there but I’ve also found most of those tend to be in the Apple or Wish-I-Had-An-Apple not the Utility-Minded crowd. As you say, personal preference reigns supreme.
The refurb sources can be hit or miss like I said, I usually look to manufacturer sites if I really really need a refurb as it’s the safest route. Got some from Newegg a client ordered themselves a couple years ago with recycled HDDs inside and HDD cages with screws missing to the point that one of them was flopping around the whole time in transit attached to the chassis with a lone screw.
@emt305 (and @jbartus) also check out SpiderOak for online backup. It is basically same thing as Carbonite, but with slightly different features, limitations and bundling that may end up being a better fit for your purposes.
S3 IA is definitely cheaper*, but not quite so simple to set up and use.
*Unless you purchased SpiderOak a couple of years ago when, for one day, they offered unlimited capacity for an unlimited number of computers for $125/year… I’ve got over 4.5TB of stuff in their cloud and the only reason I clean out the old versions of crap is (basically) OCD.
Suggestion: find out what, if anything is recommended by the college she will be attending. There also might be better on-campus support for something (presuming she won’t be living at home).
I won’t bother to discuss daughter unit 1’s laptop, since her last laptop purchase was ~5 years ago (now, her job gives her laptops and phones and the like).
Daughter unit 2’s last purchase was three years ago (a refurb’d Toshiba from Woot) for her freshman year away. Last Summer we upgraded it to an SSD (totally worth it!) and it is still working fine. Last Winter, she was talking about getting a Surface Pro 3 (IIRC), but she decided to spend three weeks in the Philippines meeting her boyfriend’s extended family instead.
I’ll definitely agree with the people who are saying to not get a Mac. Mac’s are fine as general purpose computers, but close to useless for serious game design.
The suggestion of getting a low-end laptop now so she can do her classwork and getting a 2nd machine for game dev is a good one. Since she’ll almost certainly want Windows for the game dev, Windows on this machine will likely make her life easier. (Tho the idea of a Chromebook isn’t a bad one–the $150 refurb’d Toshiba Chromebook I got from meh last December is a nice little machine, with very long battery life and a great screen.) Again, I’d suggest staying away from OS-X (Mac), unless she really wants it.
Good luck. And congrats on her going to school!
Refurb Lenovo T420 from newegg. Add an SSD. $300. Got one. Awesome. Windows still sucks, but there you go.
@ThatsHeadly Intel HD Graphics 3000 falls far short of what someone aspiring to go into game design is going to need. That might work as an inexpensive going-to-class laptop.
Been watching sales for my sis. This deal is gone. You kind of need to know what you want.
http://www.edealpc.com/ They are a deal aggregator got a killer 17" gaming laptop.
All depends what you are looking for.
We were looking for 17" SSD and some ram. The requirements are not cheap and ended up getting
Final Price: $899.99 + $60.00 - 30% = $671.99
I had been looking for several months and could not find anything under $850 that was a 17" laptops with SSD and 1080,
17" 1080 1080 display
SSD (2 hard drives one for storage and the other for speed and programs, boot times) 128gb for OS and a few of your more used programs the 1tb for movies music pictures.
memory (12gb)
Video card can keep up with the one I have in my PC. ( gaming would be easy for games in the last 3 years or older)
DVD player
Lit keyboard
She’s going to need something reasonably powerful while still being portable and having decent battery life.
Spec-wise you should be looking for:
Size: No bigger than a 15" Macbook Pro. For some reason a significant portion of the cases / packs on the market are sized for a 15" Macbook Pro, so, stay under that size and she’ll have plenty of options.
Processor: Intel Core i5 or i7 (AMD just isn’t competitive) Sixth gen (Skylake) is ideal right now but, for a good price, back to Fourth gen (Haswell) is acceptable.
RAM: 8GB minimum. (Office 2016 eats RAM, 30 tabs open in Chrome for her mid-term research paper will eat RAM, any sort of database work she’ll end up doing in programming / game design is going to eat RAM).
Storage: SSD or GTFO. Faster, less prone to failure, and better battery life. Get a USB3 external for bulk storage.
Graphics: You can get reasonably good standalone graphics in a thin, portable, laptop with good battery life; but, you’ll pay for it. That said, Intel’s integrated graphics aren’t the complete joke they used to be so if she can save the hardcore gaming for a desktop, the integrated should suffice.
Nice but not necessary: Some of the higher-end laptops are using m.2 (PCIe) SSDs, they cost more but having the laptop cold boot or come out of hibernate in about the same time as it takes to wake from sleep is so worth it.
At ~$1,000 the Dell XPS 13 and Razer Blade Stealth aren’t what anyone could call cheap but those would be what I’d probably end up getting for myself in her situation (after living on ramen and cheap pizza to save up).
@Name_Too_Long integrated graphics can be… not fatal but it needs to be a higher end version, HD Graphics 3000 as named earlier in this thread won’t cut it. Strongly advise looking for Iris Graphics / Iris Pro Graphics from Intel, failing that HD Graphics 5#00+ / 5#0 – bigger numbers are better except for Skylake chips where they changed numbering conventions to 3 digits, though bigger is still better within that 3 digit range. It is worth paying more for longevity.
I do still highly recommend investing the money instead in a custom desktop and get a basic laptop. Dollar for dollar you get far more bang for your buck on a desktop, plus the ability to upgrade over time.
@jbartus Except for some of the Haswells (4th gen Core i#), all the processors I mentioned would be in that range. And really the only reason I included the 4000 series processors is that, at launch, there weren’t any quad-core 5000 series mobile chips so most of the gaming / CAD ultrabooks were using 4720s. A year old, fully loaded, XPS 15 at the right price would certainly fit the bill.
@Name_Too_Long yeah I wasn’t arguing with you so much as supplementing. Giving people hard numbers to look for.
@emt305 I have no idea about the computer. Can I be the first one to congratulate you that your daughter is going to college. I was the first in my family to actually finish college. I have been ingraining it into my kids head’s from BIRTH they will go to college since it made all the difference to me going back at the age of 29.
Congratulations to you and your daughter and her bright future. Wishing her the best of luck in this endeavor. I don’t even have a gif for this as it is this important - just words.
Thanks for all the advice! As for budget, trying to stay under 1K & after reading all your input, considering getting the laptop now & saving up for a PC later when she gets into serious design. She wants a 15.6" pretty sure. Going to Univ of Cincinnati, Windows based & they provide Office Suite & McAfee.
$1K for the laptop or combined between now and later? For general use you can get a lot of laptop for $1000, splitting I’d suggest keeping the laptop budget low as you can and see if she can’t get work study or something to save up a few hundred to put towards the desktop.
@emt305 Yeah, don’t use McAfee. The built in “Windows Defender” AV is about as effective as anything else out there and doesn’t add a ton of attack surface like third party AV does (I recommend reading up on the work Tavis Ormandy has been doing. TL;DR: he’s been wading through the “endpoint protection” market and leaving a trail of devastation and broken dreams in his wake).
Quick guide to a secure-ish computer:
Whatever you get, you’re going to want to do a clean reinstall of Windows. It’s just the easiest way to undo whatever stupidity the OEM did; and they ALL do stupid stuff.
Next is drivers. It will take a bit more effort but don’t give in to the temptation of using one of those “find drivers” tools. Multiple manufacturers’ versions have been found to have major security flaws. Go old school and download the individual drivers. For bonus points, check the component manufacturers’ sites for newer drivers than the OEM has listed (e.g. Intel for chipset).
Install Chrome 64 bit with an ad blocker (I use ublock origin). There are lots of arguments about browsers but Chrome is the most secure of the mainstream. It just is. This alone immunizes you from 90+% of the exploit kits and drive-by downloads you’re likely to encounter.
Install EMET (http://www.howtogeek.com/190590/quickly-secure-your-computer-with-microsofts-enhanced-mitigation-experience-toolkit-emet/). It won’t make you hack / virus proof but it raises the bar.
If you don’t absolutely need Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Java, or Silverlight; don’t install them (Chrome has its own Flash engine and PDF reader). They’re all giant piles of seemingly endless 0-day.
Patch All The Things!!! I cannot stress the importance of staying on top of patches and keeping your software up to date enough. Case in point: a few months back Adobe released a patch to Flash; within three days that patch had been reverse engineered, an exploit had been developed for one of the vulnerabilities it patched, and that exploit had been rolled into the Angler exploit kit which used malicious ads on mainstream websites to install ransomware on users’ computers.
Don’t be a dumbass. Don’t try to install pirated or “cracked” software. Don’t try to run keygens. It is literally like three commands in metasploit to embed a payload into an executable. At this point, there are free (often open source) tools for just about anything you could possibly want to do; use those instead of pirating.
@jbartus The 1K is the top of the budget for the laptop for now. I don’t see making a huge investment until we see for sure that she’ll be sticking to this major, you know how those change.
@emt305 in that case the computer @narfcake recommended would be my recommendation as well. SSD optional but worth doing in my opinion. When you’re ready to go for building a desktop let me know and I’ll be happy to assist!
@jbartus Thanks! I’ll remember that!!
I always tell my customers to talk with the college.Most of the time they have specs for a device with the program of study. It’s a good idea to check to see if the school allows you to bring your own device or they provide one for you. Some schools require you take their device, they don’t give you an option of using your own.
@joe43wv I asked the schools we visited for my daughter. They had cloud storage. This is fantastic if you are not familiar with the idea.
Also for software see if this will work free and nothing to install.
https://office.live.com/start/Word.aspx
@caffeine_dude This appears to be associated with Office 365. Your daughter will definitely need Office for School. Typically Word, Excel, and PowerPoint is all she will need but check with the Program she is studying to see if there are any other office apps she will need. Open Office is a free open source alternative she can use, I’ll post the link below, but most colleges prefer Microsoft Office because they will tell you for compatibility but it’s mainly for they don’t like change. Open Office supports Microsoft Office documents no problem but if for some reason she sends in a file and they have trouble opening it they will blame Open Office faster than you can turn around. Microsoft does have a Office for college students called Office 365 University, you have to have a college email that ends in .edu to qualify. It’s $79.99 for four years and includes offline and online versions of Office, plus 1TB of cloud storage. I would recommend going this route because if Microsoft decides to roll out a new version you can upgrade for free with Office 365. Also, check the college book store to see if they can get Office 365 at a discount sometimes they have GREAT discounts on software.
http://www.openoffice.org/
@joe43wv
Definitely check with the bookstore. At my college they offered Office for $10.
@caffeine_dude
Use the online stuff only as a last resort. It’s slow and lacks many of the extra features that are available with the full version.
@DVDBZN is right. Also remember online means you have to rely on an internet connection. No internet, no work.
@joe43wv I was not sure if Microsoft Office online had enough features to replace MS Word.
https://www.office.com/ I never used it beyond checking it out for a few minutes, and setting it up on my Wife’s chromebook. Formating from her xlsx spreadsheets from work got messed up in google sheets and in her Open Office. (I did not try LibreOffice)
At work I switched from OpenOffice to LibreOffice. LibreOffice has better compatibility with the latest extensions from Microsoft. It is more stable than OpenOffice. In the past when I was using OpenOffice, OpenOffice would just crash and close on average 1 time a week.
You people are awesome!!! I so appreciate your advice!!
We finally decided on an HP special Star Wars Edition laptop. It has 1 TB hard drive, 12 GB RAM, Intel i5 core processor, 15" HD IPS touch screen, NVIDIA GForce video card, B&O Play audio that sounds awesome and came with lots of Star Wars extras. The outer case makes it look old & rather beat up, but she loves it. It has red back-lit keyboard, too. She’s midway into year 2 & has had no problems with it. Got an excellent deal on it at Best Buy, they were giving additional money off if you were a college student. Very happy with the purchase. Good luck to you and your son!
@emt305 Thank you!
Since you haven’t mentioned budget limits, it’s a little hard to judge. Based on my engineering/design/mfg background, I like the mobile workstations from Dell (Precision) & HP (ZBook) if you can only have 1 machine. Powerful processors, good graphics, yet still (fairly) portable. Refurb/off-lease are probably OK: because of who’s most likely to use them, chances are they’ve been handled with respect & maintained professionally.
These are often available from computers.woot (blasphemy, I know) listed under ‘business class laptops’ and at the Dell & HP outlets.
Example: Dell Precision from woot
Potential drawback: not really sure if they’re suited for video game design
@compunaut second the compliments for the Precision line, also agree with your assessment that they should be well cared for machines. With Quadro / FirePro cards they are more oriented towards CAD than games but they ought to perform a far sight better than a laptop with integrated graphics.
Lots of good suggestions here already, and I’ll save laptop recommendations for a later post, and just post some general ideas here:
Use Backblaze for backups- $5/month for unlimited backups on your Mac or PC.
While I love EMET, and use it everywhere at work, MalwareBytes Anti-Exploit (free or paid) is probably the better option unless you want the extra security and are willing to troubleshoot issues when they pop up.
SSD’s are great, but be careful- I’ve had hard drives die on me and SSD’s, and the SSD’s just suddenly died one day, unlike the hard drives which would die over a period of time.
@dashcloud second Malwarebytes. EMET is great but more power-user oriented.
For SSDs brand really does matter, don’t skimp. Sandisk, Samsung, and Intel are all pretty solid, other manufacturers have been hit or miss over the years. My personal go-to these days is Samsung but Sandisk is on my list as next candidate for review for go-to as they seem to be challenging Samsung for top of the market.
@dashcloud Really? We have only had 1 SSD fail. I am not sure of the percentages, but we only use SanDisks. Are you talking 3.5 hhd vs ssd, or 2.5 hhd vs ssd? Laptop hhd seem very fragile to me. Then you put them in a box and let people carry them around. hhd can suddenly fail.
Make sure you get an SSD. I just worked on a convertable this weekend. Arguably enough ram (can never have too much) at 4gb on Win10 but performance was laggy. The disk was spinning at 5400RPM. Task Manager had some programs using %100 of the disks for minutes at a time.
Why do they put a 5400rpm disk in a modern laptop??? (yes I get it money, but would you ever do something so evil for money?)
if anyone is still looking for a laptop
http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-15-7559-laptop/pd?oc=dncwpw5716haff
coupon code L9MGXPLP5T9NRK
$700 + Free Shipping
Specs:
@communist I just tried this & the coupon won’t apply. Maybe I’m doing something wrong? I didn’t add anything to the computer your post linked to, just went to checkout & tried to apply the coupon code. Maybe expired?
@emt305 it looks like the coupon expired
Okay, I checked out the website mentioned by @caffeine_dude last nite, http://www.edealpc.com/ and they have several interesting laptops. So which would be better? an Inspiron 15 5000 Dual Core i7 6G or an Insprion 15 7000 Quad Core i7 6G? Is a Quad Core better than a Dual Core?
@emt305 My $.02 (might not even be worth that much):
Quad Core is probably overkill for gen-Ed classes, but worth extra $50 on otherwise equivalent machines
@emt305 Quad Core is far better. Not vital, but helpful.
@emt305 Sorry I missed this. Do they have an SSD hard drive? Could you link the choices?
@caffeine_dude Think this is one: http://us-store.acer.com/aspire-r-15-r5-571tg-78g6-convertible-laptop?utm_campaign=cj_affiliate_sale&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=598022-5873920&utm_content=eDealinfo+USA+Inc.-11379691&utm_term=11379691&cjid=5873920
Here’s a Dell: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=fncwv2319s&cs=19&c=US&l=EN&vw=list&dgc=CJ&cid=47997&lid=4279734&acd=12309198375458460&ven1=11886213-5873920-edealpc&ven3=870702319720013441
And here is a Lenovo: http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/builder.workflow:Enter?mtm-item=:000001C9:00019139:&clickid=Vxv1TcTErTbL12RTuuVItR50Ukkxm%3ARqk3BmS00&PID=29332&acid=ww:affiliate:bv0as6&irgwc=1
@emt305 one issue with that list
ALL 3 LAPTOPS use the mobile(notice the U in i7-6500U i5-6200U ) version of the processor
this is one of the weird cases where
i3 faster than a i7
and i5 is even faster than a i7
they are low power LOW PERFORMANCE processors,
if you are going to spend 800+ i would get something a bit more future-proof more power/for the price
@emt305 for example this computer
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834890015
https://www.amazon.com/Dell-15-6-Inch-Quad-Core-i5-6300HQ-Processor/dp/B015PYYDMQ/ref=lp_13896615011_1_8?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1468972327&sr=1-8
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/msi-cx62-6qd-15-6-laptop-intel-core-i5-8gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-black/4968036.p?id=bb4968036&skuId=4968036
uses an i5, but its a full power normal i5 and is 50% faster than the i7 in the 2 laptops that you linked.
just my 2 cents
@emt305 I am a SSD fanboy, but for a reason. The manufactures know the SSD is the thing to have and have no issues over charging for it. If you feel comfortable installing windows you can money by buying the least expensive of the 3 laptops and then removing the hard drive and install this hard drive https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-240GB-2-5-Inch-SDSSDA-240G-G25-Version/dp/B00S9Q9VS4/ref=sr_1_17?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1468985583&sr=1-17
and installing windows. Get someone to help? It may void warranties.
Based on the 6 listed above if I was to pick any of the 3 below would be OK.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834890015
Or
https://www.amazon.com/Dell-15-6-Inch-Quad-Core-i5-6300HQ-Processor/dp/B015PYYDMQ/ref=lp_13896615011_1_8?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1468972327&sr=1-8
or
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/builder.workflow:Enter?mtm-item=:000001C9:00019139:&clickid=Vxv1TcTErTbL12RTuuVItR50Ukkxm%3ARqk3BmS00&PID=29332&acid=ww:affiliate:bv0as6&irgwc=1
Admittedly, I am fairly ignorant on the workings of computers - I can navigate the programs needed and get done what I need, but don’t understand the inner stuff. With that said, I would stress to you to check with the school before you purchase to see what platforms/versions are supported.
I need to replace a 3 year old HP (never again) and am having extreme difficulty because the school only supports up to Windows 8 and finding anything new with less than Win 10 is proving to be difficult. Like I said, I don’t understand why, but the IT peeps said that I would have trouble with anything over 8.
@dolphinone Newegg & BH Photo Video both have an excellent selection of pre-Windows 10 machines. If you’ve got requirements or something you’d like, tell us and we’ll try to help you out here.
Also, refurbs can be an excellent choice for getting better equipment at lower prices.
@dashcloud Thank you for the info and the offer. I don’t want to hijack the thread with my needs, I will check both of your suggestions and create a thread if I can’t find one.
@dolphinone Go ahead and create a new thread, including your purpose, a budget, and whether you prefer new or if refurbished is okay.
@narfcake Thank you for the reminder. I have been super busy with classes and forgot. With that said, I have been reading the Win 10 thread tonight, which now has me anxious about the eventual drop of 8.1, so I don’t know which direction I am going to go in. I am able to Band-Aid and coddle my HP along right now…as long as I use it as a desktop…so maybe waiting a little bit might be the best. I only have to continue to baby it through the rest of fall and spring and then for grad school it won’t matter what I purchase - to a degree (no pun intended). I really appreciate your support though!
Bumping an old thread. Hey @emt305, was wondering what laptop you went with and how it has worked out for your daughter. I am in pretty much the same situation. Son started college this fall, same area of study. He didn’t want a laptop when the year started, but now he sees the need for one and is asking for it for Christmas.
I know this is a good time to find deals, so if anybody else has some current recommendations, that would be cool also.
First of all, tell your daughter congrats, and don’t give up. It may be difficult at times, but is worth it in the end. One of my favorite classes was on game development (with Unity), so she made a good choice, in my opinion.
As for a laptop, I have a six-year-old laptop that served me well through college. While I don’t recommend getting a used or cheap computer, I also don’t recommend you spend too much.
Minimum specs:
CPU: Intel Core-i5 (~$200)
RAM: 8-16 GB ($30-60)
GPU: 2 GB ($50-100)
Storage: 1 TB HDD (<$50 will need to be upgraded in 4-5 years) OR 256 GB SSD (~$75) and external storage for files.
Screen size: I recommend 15.6". Mine is 17.3" and has trouble fitting in smaller cases, but the large monitor is useful for multitasking.
Bottom line: something in the $700-$800 range should work well. Spend more only if it has required or important features that cheaper ones don’t.
I love helping out with computer related problems and questions, so feel free to ask more in the future.
We got out son the Surface Book… The i7 512gig one… For performance it is great (he’s a CS major)…he carries it everywhere! Usually tethered to his phone. But, because he carries it EVERYWHERE, he has had to utilize the warranty feature as he is hard on it… But the warranty service has been quick and easy each time.
I loathed carrying around my big 15" screen laptop (now 7 years old?) when I was going to school. It was huge, bulky, and super heavy - plus I lived close enough to campus that I always walked.
When I went to grad school I got a 10" tablet with a keyboard dock to take with me to class. That was one of the better decisions I made for school - super light and slim, and start up time was nice and snappy. It was awesome for taking notes in class (I would work in Google Drive), and easy enough to carry around everywhere.
If I could redo the whole thing, I would have 2 laptops - one a tablet/keyboard (or a Chromebook) to take to class (you can get these for less than $200, sometimes closer to $100 if you’re lucky) and a real laptop or desktop for when I was home doing ‘real’ work.
Except for the hard drive (I’d suggest replacing it with a SSD), the Asus listed here for $530 ought to serve well.
http://slickdeals.net/f/8911983-asus-q504ua-15-6-2-in-1-touchscreen-laptop-i5-6200u-12gb-ddr4-1tb-hdd-1080p-530-free-s-h-w-email-code
I just found 3 that I would like you all to look at (one looks a lot like the one @communist mentioned above) and let me know what you think. Really appreciate everyone’s time & input! http://www.dell.com/us/eep/p/configuration-compare.aspx?returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dell.com%2Fus%2Feep%2Fp%2Flaptops%23!facets%3D226291~0~16387360%2C280848~0~21712771%2C226291~0~16387359%2C55846~0~5930680%26p%3D1%26sort%3Dprice
Don’t forget Dell Outlet sales. They have the same warranty, but they don’t last long. I bought a couple of laptops there in years past, and was always pleased. http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/28/campaigns/outlet