New Laptop for Student?

When it comes to cooling -- I love how the Asus laptops have a built in 'ergo' lift as they call it. It simply lifts the back of the laptop up allowing generous airflow --



This unit cracks a grand but the spec is worth it --

drkmoore1 said:

Lenovo ThinkPad T490 (Intel i7-8665U Processor, 8 GB RAM 2400MHz)
Lenovo ThinkPad T14s (AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 4650U Processor, 8 GB RAM 3200MHz)
Lenovo Ideapad 5 14 (AMD Ryzen 5 4500U Processor, 16 GB RAM 3200MHz)

I own a Lenovo with 8Gbs of RAM and (without much warning) the system dedicates 2GBs to the graphics chip. Can't be undone. And so really I have a 6G unit.

To make your laptop future proof the only choice from above I'd recommend is 16GB. (I just bought a 12 GB tower and the system is simply smoother. 'Sandbox' and recording onscreen video in OBS studio is a pleasure.

The sale ends today, in 9 hours and this is a Black Friday-Cyber Monday price = 35% off.

Students are getting an extra 5% (734.21us$/1189.00/40%).

Chat with them or call free, 8 Core's better, but this one has a 12 week delivery schedule?

It won't be that low in May, unless of a sale on Mother's day (first week). Next one will be Father's day 3rd week of June.

The laptop is rated 4.8/5 by users and you get backlit keyboard. This is hard to beat mate.

I think the Think Pad is a good choice. It's a business-class machine.
Avoid the crappy home laptops that break down again and again ... and land in the trash can, unusable after two years.

EdTittel said:

FWIW, I agree that 16 GB is the min RAM configuration I'm willing to field these days. Even if you only run 1 or 2 VMs along with other stuff, that extra 8 GB makes a huge difference. I only own one laptop with 8 GB anymore (the rest all have 16, and two have 32) and I don't use it very much. It's basically an Insider Preview Beta Channel test machine only, and I don't try to do anything serious with it anymore.
HTH,
--Ed--

Hi Ed,

But it there any over riding reason why a new Non-gaming/video edit PC/LT can't get by on 8gb of ram?

Jaylob4 said:

But it there any over riding reason why a new Non-gaming/video edit PC/LT can't get by on 8gb of ram?

I know I'm not Ed. (At least I hope I'm not. Because multiple personality.) Know that I'm getting by with 6 on my Lenovo (because 2 is tied to a GPU I kinda never use). Had I caught that faster I might have returned it.

(The thing is I got that laptop early on Amazon and for a song. $523. It promptly went up in price. It's still being sold for $780.)



(If I wasn't doing other things I should see if I could all my money back on eBay and get a 12/16GB variant.)

I totally digressed. Where was I?

Oh yeah -- you can get by with 8GB, no doubt. But I'd still bump it up. Windows behaves completely different. This is the update of my PC that I would recommend --

The Pool Man said:

I know I'm not Ed. (At least I hope I'm not. Because multiple personality.) Know that I'm getting by with 6 on my Lenovo (because 2 is tied to a GPU I kinda never use). Had I caught that faster I might have returned it.
(The thing is I got that laptop early on Amazon and for a song. $523. It promptly went up in price. It's still being sold for $780.)
(If I wasn't doing other things I should see if I could all my money back on eBay and get a 12/16GB variant.)
I totally digressed. Where was I?
Oh yeah -- you can get by with 8GB, no doubt. But I'd still bump it up. Windows behaves completely different. This is the update of my PC that I would recommend --

Hi,

I get the argument for a LT and having a decent amount of ram--I get it and more so with a LT then a PC.

But I have always had this niggling suspicion the amount of ram installed, with a new LT/PC,--is oversold.

I don't want to put myself in a corner, I understand the concept of "more the merrier" but is it really necessary on many LT/PC machines?--I'm not convinced.

Jaylob4 said:

I don't want to put myself in a corner, I understand the concept of "more the merrier" but is it really necessary on many LT/PC machines?--I'm not convinced.

It's not quite that or I'd be advocating 32GBs. There is noticeable difference between 8 and 12, though I should add I went from a
Gen 8 i5 to Gen 10 i5.

What I will question is how 'wow' Ryzen really is if you're not gaming. (And I'm not.) The YouTube reviews I've watched (and that's a LOT of them) kinda speak to how the unit TAKES OFF during game. But since I'm never in that situation I find the holding pattern of my Ryzen kinda... disappoints. This Intel i5 smokes in that way.

Not based on any benches. Just which one do I want to work in front of. The new i5 no contest. (But then I got all that RAM too.)