New Laptop Advice

chris said:
You must be very proud :thumbsup:

And your only giving her £500 :rofl: :poke:

:D
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Real proud :thumbsup:
£500 :rofl: :rofl: Nope - She's had around £3,000 in 'reward' money, when I add together cash and a holiday where I sent her to the US for 2 weeks.

Oh and of course there's the small matter of £6,500 accomodation and £3,200 fees in year 1 alone
 
cj10jeeper said:
Oh and of course there's the small matter of £6,500 accomodation and £3,200 fees in year 1 alone
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My colleague's daughter did not go to uni. this year. She got a trainee job in a accountancy firm and study AAT at the same time, starting salary of £14.5k. He said his daughter does not want huge debt after 3 years. She can now get paid and employer pays for her study. She can become certified accountant in 5 years. BBC News said employers now only consider job applicants with minimum 2:1 degree for interview. Many school leavers with good A-level results had chosen to enter accountancy and law career with practices.
 
ksher said:
cj10jeeper said:
Oh and of course there's the small matter of £6,500 accomodation and £3,200 fees in year 1 alone
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My colleague's daughter did not go to uni. this year. She got a trainee job in a accountancy firm and study AAT at the same time, starting salary of £14.5k. He said his daughter does not want huge debt after 3 years. She can now get paid and employer pays for her study. She can become certified accountant in 5 years. BBC News said employers now only consider job applicants with minimum 2:1 degree for interview. Many school leavers with good A-level results had chosen to enter accountancy and law career with practices.
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ksher - we digress, but too many under qualified people are encouraged to go to uni and take inappropriate course, when other routes would be much better. I feel for them and the £20 to £30k debt they may rack up. I'm prepared to fund it for my daughter if that's what she wants to do. If it were to study a non subject at a non 'real' uni I'd question it.

One of our close family friends daughters studied Law. Qualified with a good degree and entered commercial practice. At the age of 26 she is now on £60k base. In another 5 she will have completed stints in Aus and the US and aside the experience be in line for partner status and the £100k+
 
cj10jeeper said:
Z4 Beemer said:
Does the Uni she is going to not have any schemes in place for buying laptops at reduced prices?

I would have thought Dell would be worth a look also. They are part of the NNA (National Notebook Agreement) for most Universities.
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News to me - never heard of the scheme. Will do some research though :thumbsup:
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CJ - have used Dell for all my 3 as they have gone through Uni (that's why I'm still working.... but thats another story). Reliable and quickly sorted if any problems - and very very few problems in reality. Sony have a reutation for burning out hard drives due to heat build up in the power supply and battery unit - good quality components but not well ventialted in terms of cooling and as students have a habit of leaving them on sofas, beds etc I would stear clear.

Suggest you check the Uni as several, as indicated are in bulk purchase (and maintenance schemes), which may help reduce the cost. But whatever you get ensure your daughter backs up any work on the University mainframe - lost work = no marks and pain for all (as my eldest son can vouch!)
 
Back on topic, I've never had a problem with Dell or Acer laptops or desktops. I now only use my laptop - it's a Dell Inspiron 1525 (I think), cost £350 from Tesco (in-store at an Extra store) over 2.5 years ago. I've upgraded the HD to 500GB - only because I needed the extra storage) and replaced the battery which died after 18 months, but apart from that it's been faultless. It does enough for me including running Photoshop with not much stalling. I'm debating upgrading the RAM to 4GB (currently 2GB I think) but just not got around to doing it.

My wife recently got a reconditioned Acer of some sort, 11.1" widescreen, Blu-ray drive, Windows 7, for under £400 around 8 months(?) ago. It's been faultless too.

Not sure on availability/models with a numeric keypad though...
 
Best of luck to her cj10jeeper, although having the support from you will obviously ease things quite a bit.

Let us know how you get on with the laptop. :thumbsup:
 
Dell for me, cheap and cheerfull and last the two to three years that they all do. Buy them online and you can avoid the sheer hell of the retailers
 
Assuming your daughter has a student card (mad if she did not as you get discount on clothes as well :) ), you get discount on ALL major makes.

Oh - Mac OS is NOT dual boot, just use Parallels which I do for Win7 so you run Mac OS and Windows at the same time.
 
pvr, yes it IS dual boot. Just go to utilities and Bootcamp assistant. Partitions off a part of your hard drive. Hold down the "option" key when you boot up and 2 hard drives will appear-one is your MacOS and the other is Windows. Since the Mac has an intel chipset, it runs natively.


Parallels is ok, but I like Fusion a little better. You can have as many virtual machines as you want with Fusion but with Parallels and Fusion you're running in emulation mode so not quite as fast as native.
 
I meant - dual boot is old fashioned and not required anymore with Fusion and Parallels. Dual boot is often seen as a pain. Embedded means you can use all at the same time.
 
pvr said:
I meant - dual boot is old fashioned and not required anymore with Fusion and Parallels. Dual boot is often seen as a pain. Embedded means you can use all at the same time.
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True. If you're not doing something really processor intensive, the emulators work pretty well. I have noticed that Win7 really makes the chip run hotter (fan on, outside of case gets hotter) than MacOS 10.6 does.
 
An awfully detailed and complicated thread for what should be a simple purchase.

If she doesn't intend to run rendering or analysis programs then I would go for any of the big vendors (except apple - too expensive and you will get stung on software/compatibility)

Large hard-drive for her mp3's, dual core, 4gb ram, windows and office student edition. Oh and that important 2/3 year warranty.

If you do decide to go dell, I can provide you with an employee discount code as they are my companies preferred vendor.
 
Ranski - spot on - Got all complicated with Macs.

Frankly having had a good look for what she needs a £300 machine would nail it, however having taken her to the shop it's now:
Sony, Samsung or a Toshiba. All £500 with 3 or 4gb Ram 350hd, 15.6" screen, etc. Comes down to look and style over performance

Despite al the student discounts, University shops, NNA, etc. the most bizarre places run the best deals like BHS online and Costco if it's the Sony as they chuck in 2 year warranties.

Software is cheap as chips - MS office Pro Plus for £38 Vs usual nearer £400 !!
http://www.rm.com/shops/hebasement/Range.aspx?nguid=d6c56024-453d-453a-914d-b6d34f5ac379
 
I'm often tempted when doing the weekly food shop at Tesco's to pick up a laptop, as a times they have offers on that appear to be very good value for money. I suspect laptops purchased via the University will come with a 3 or 4 year warranty... which might be what is bumping up the price////?

As for software, again worth checking.... depending on the agreement the University has with Microsoft, she may be entitled to it for only the cost of the media (i.e. almost free)!
 
Z4 Beemer said:
I'm often tempted when doing the weekly food shop at Tesco's to pick up a laptop, as a times they have offers on that appear to be very good value for money. I suspect laptops purchased via the University will come with a 3 or 4 year warranty... which might be what is bumping up the price////?

As for software, again worth checking.... depending on the agreement the University has with Microsoft, she may be entitled to it for only the cost of the media (i.e. almost free)!
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Think the Uni ones come with theft insurance as well.
 
talking of theft, or loss, or damage,
do you already have plans for regular backups of the important data from the laptop to an external device or the cloud?
and/or encrypt the complete harddisk to protect the data (e.g. PGP or TrueCrypt) in case of theft?
 
Thanks Alan - still working on the uni angle, but getting no sense.

nicko - yep uni is not like it used to be. This one is hard wired free 8mb upgradable to 50mb internet. unlimited backups. Streamed TV, MAC protected access. Just need to encrypt the disc - good call

My contents insurance covers anything except accidentally leaving it somewhere.
 
would recommend samsung here too, and agree that hp's take a lot of beating before they break and look fairly good.

in laptops assuming you want better than a £250 netbook (which i still think are brilliant), the deals are endless and that's what would sway me within reason.

also agree with 4gb ram, dual core, 250gb+ & office student edition & obviously windows7.

have a look at hotukdeals - some of the laptop deals that come up can be excellent value.

i agree with what you said about lenovo, ive seen some bad ones too. but the one here doesn't seem bad.
 
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