Trying to be efficient. My wife wants to get my son an iPad and PC laptop for my son that's going to be a freshman in Mays this fall. I'm pushing towards a surface pro 11.

Any thoughts? Drawbacks to a surface pro for student use?

I hate both for working, but i'm a millennial, so I have no idea what the kids like using these days. I like a standard laptop. For the money, you can get a much more powerful laptop.

ETA: I have a Surface Pro Laptop I bought for work a couple years back. I think it's trash, as far as performance, and will never buy another one.

Thanks for the feedback.

A little clarification
Her thoughts iPad for note taking and light tasks in class. Laptop with a 2nd screen at home for working. Plus laptop can be taken other places to work.

Me
I think a surface pro could do all of that.

I've considered the Remarkable. I've always used my Galaxy with stylus for taking notes in meetings.

Lathspell said:

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I've considered the Remarkable. I've always used my Galaxy with stylus for taking notes in meetings.

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I'd love to switch to a Remarkable, but until they have searchable handwriting I won't consider it. I have an iPad with Notability and it's perfect for note taking. I don't have to convert to text and it still can search my chicken scratch handwriting almost flawlessly.

The drawback of an iPad is just that they're overpriced for JUST note taking and much heavier. I'd never use it as a laptop replacement though either.

Thanks for all of the feedback!

dubi said:

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I'd start with a nice laptop with a good video card and a monitor for his dorm room.

Any sort of data analysis needs a good laptop and, IMO, minimum 32gb of ram. I am a Mays '86 grad in MIS.

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Just curious, why would a business major need a good video card?

Any opinions on what to get for a Neuroscience major? Minimum recommendation is 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, but preferred is 32GB and 1TB. Is the 32GB of RAM really just future proofing for 4 years from now? Not sure what type of programs they may run that would need that much RAM. And there was no mention of more than integrated graphics, so I don't know that a discrete card is necessary.

I was looking at the Dell Latitude 5450 and XPS 14 with an Ultra 7 processor. Not sure what is the better option. I have been pleased with my Latitude for work.

If starting school knowing what I know an Air M2 and Ipad pro.

Will last 4 years.

Carry iPad daily but laptop for heavy lifting / backup machine.

Our kid is in Mays and we got him a Surface Pro. Also got a monitor/keyboard for the dorm that he could hook his laptop to when he was using it there. He said it worked perfect for him. Not sure how much he's using the stylus to write notes though.

Many of the cheaper laptops have lower end screen resolution which is less than ideal when working on large spreadsheets, PowerPoints, or programming projects.

I used a Surface Pro for 2 years, and I hated it almost immediately. I replaced it two weeks ago with an LG Gram, and things are so much better.

I wanted a Lenovo ThinkPad, but the one I wanted sold out during the summer black Friday thing.

In college I had a Mac Book Pro, and it was ideal. I would love to use a Mac, but I do a lot of excel modeling and the lack of accelerator keys doesn't cut it.

I have used a Surface Pro for working, even doing some coding in Visual Studio, for years with no problems. I love it.

Now, I have one with 32 GB of RAM. So keep in mind you want one with some juice.

khkman22 said:

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dubi said:

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I'd start with a nice laptop with a good video card and a monitor for his dorm room.

Any sort of data analysis needs a good laptop and, IMO, minimum 32gb of ram. I am a Mays '86 grad in MIS.

---

Just curious, why would a business major need a good video card?

Any opinions on what to get for a Neuroscience major? Minimum recommendation is 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, but preferred is 32GB and 1TB. Is the 32GB of RAM really just future proofing for 4 years from now? Not sure what type of programs they may run that would need that much RAM. And there was no mention of more than integrated graphics, so I don't know that a discrete card is necessary.

I was looking at the Dell Latitude 5450 and XPS 14 with an Ultra 7 processor. Not sure what is the better option. I have been pleased with my Latitude for work.

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Data analysis, analytics, AI LLMs, etc... all of that number crunching these days use the video card more than CPU. It's why Nvidia's stock and market cap have shot through the rough the last few years.

IrishAg said:

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khkman22 said:

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dubi said:

---

I'd start with a nice laptop with a good video card and a monitor for his dorm room.

Any sort of data analysis needs a good laptop and, IMO, minimum 32gb of ram. I am a Mays '86 grad in MIS.

---

Just curious, why would a business major need a good video card?

Any opinions on what to get for a Neuroscience major? Minimum recommendation is 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, but preferred is 32GB and 1TB. Is the 32GB of RAM really just future proofing for 4 years from now? Not sure what type of programs they may run that would need that much RAM. And there was no mention of more than integrated graphics, so I don't know that a discrete card is necessary.

I was looking at the Dell Latitude 5450 and XPS 14 with an Ultra 7 processor. Not sure what is the better option. I have been pleased with my Latitude for work.

---

Data analysis, analytics, AI LLMs, etc... all of that number crunching these days use the video card more than CPU. It's why Nvidia's stock and market cap have shot through the rough the last few years.

---

So would a dedicated graphics card with 6GB of memory and 16GB of system RAM be better performing than a laptop with 32GB of system RAM and an integrated GPU? Looking at the GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile 6GB vs just the Intel Arc iGPU (4-Cores). The GeForce has 7.9 TFLOPS compared to 1.8-2.1 for the integrated.

Just didn't plan on spending $2,000 including warranty. I was thinking/hoping I could get something for $1,500, but that doesn't look possible.

khkman22 said:

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IrishAg said:

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khkman22 said:

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dubi said:

---

I'd start with a nice laptop with a good video card and a monitor for his dorm room.

Any sort of data analysis needs a good laptop and, IMO, minimum 32gb of ram. I am a Mays '86 grad in MIS.

---

Just curious, why would a business major need a good video card?

Any opinions on what to get for a Neuroscience major? Minimum recommendation is 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, but preferred is 32GB and 1TB. Is the 32GB of RAM really just future proofing for 4 years from now? Not sure what type of programs they may run that would need that much RAM. And there was no mention of more than integrated graphics, so I don't know that a discrete card is necessary.

I was looking at the Dell Latitude 5450 and XPS 14 with an Ultra 7 processor. Not sure what is the better option. I have been pleased with my Latitude for work.

---

Data analysis, analytics, AI LLMs, etc... all of that number crunching these days use the video card more than CPU. It's why Nvidia's stock and market cap have shot through the rough the last few years.

---

So would a dedicated graphics card with 6GB of memory and 16GB of system RAM be better performing than a laptop with 32GB of system RAM and an integrated GPU? Looking at the GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile 6GB vs just the Intel Arc iGPU (4-Cores). The GeForce has 7.9 TFLOPS compared to 1.8-2.1 for the integrated.

Just didn't plan on spending $2,000 including warranty. I was thinking/hoping I could get something for $1,500, but that doesn't look possible.

---

I'm honestly not sure, I don't know if they have to rely on their laptops to run some of their modeling or if they're given access to specific servers to do that. In general, leveraging a dedicated graphics card can potentially speed up a lot of processes, but I don't know what they're doing these days as I'm long removed and only approach data and LLMs as a hobby and not my career. With that said, if I was playing around with this on my own time and only had access to a laptop, I would want a discrete card to leverage.

Can anyone else that closer to the current student needs help out on what the resources available are?

IrishAg said:

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khkman22 said:

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IrishAg said:

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khkman22 said:

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dubi said:

---

I'd start with a nice laptop with a good video card and a monitor for his dorm room.

Any sort of data analysis needs a good laptop and, IMO, minimum 32gb of ram. I am a Mays '86 grad in MIS.

---

Just curious, why would a business major need a good video card?

Any opinions on what to get for a Neuroscience major? Minimum recommendation is 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, but preferred is 32GB and 1TB. Is the 32GB of RAM really just future proofing for 4 years from now? Not sure what type of programs they may run that would need that much RAM. And there was no mention of more than integrated graphics, so I don't know that a discrete card is necessary.

I was looking at the Dell Latitude 5450 and XPS 14 with an Ultra 7 processor. Not sure what is the better option. I have been pleased with my Latitude for work.

---

Data analysis, analytics, AI LLMs, etc... all of that number crunching these days use the video card more than CPU. It's why Nvidia's stock and market cap have shot through the rough the last few years.

---

So would a dedicated graphics card with 6GB of memory and 16GB of system RAM be better performing than a laptop with 32GB of system RAM and an integrated GPU? Looking at the GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile 6GB vs just the Intel Arc iGPU (4-Cores). The GeForce has 7.9 TFLOPS compared to 1.8-2.1 for the integrated.

Just didn't plan on spending $2,000 including warranty. I was thinking/hoping I could get something for $1,500, but that doesn't look possible.

---

I'm honestly not sure, I don't know if they have to rely on their laptops to run some of their modeling or if they're given access to specific servers to do that. In general, leveraging a dedicated graphics card can potentially speed up a lot of processes, but I don't know what they're doing these days as I'm long removed and only approach data and LLMs as a hobby and not my career. With that said, if I was playing around with this on my own time and only had access to a laptop, I would want a discrete card to leverage.

Can anyone else that closer to the current student needs help out on what the resources available are?

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Reading the information again, there are dedicated labs to be used, with physical and virtual computers. So if there is anything that requires more taxing hardware, it may be better to let the university keep up with what is optimal. Since there is no mention of a discrete graphics card, even as a preferred option, I think I'm just going to go with the 32GB and integrated graphics card.

I've had an integrated GPU and the laptop was so super slow to render the screen.

IMO, you need both >= 32gb ram AND a dedicated video card.

My two daughters both have the larger iPad Pros and laptops. One does all notes on her iPad and the larger screen size is ideal for split screen work. She doesn't think she could live without it. The other takes notes almost exclusively on her laptop and uses iPad for artwork and youtube.

Conclusion: it depends on the kid.

Based on the comments, I can see some of you are gamers.

Im thinking about a Remarkable.

Comeby! said:

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Based on the comments, I can see some of you are gamers.

Im thinking about a Remarkable.

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I'm thinking about a Remarkable, I've heard a lot of good things from some co-workers.

Looking back through, the gamers comment is kind of weird. Did you make that because of the graphics card talk? A high end graphics card is a critical need if you're doing anything with data science or AI, which is where a lot of business is going these days.

I think the majority of folks touting graphics cards are not AI users/developers. I'm an engineer and former coder and yes, there is a use case for a high end graphics cards. That being said, most don't need it, especially at the student level.

Comeby! said:

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I think the majority of folks touting graphics cards are not AI users/developers. I'm an engineer and former coder and yes, there is a use case for a high end graphics cards. That being said, most don't need it, especially at the student level.

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HA, could be, I guess I just assume everyone wants a high end graphics card because of AI these days. It's sad that everyone I know (myself include) has a high end spec machine but no one games on them.

Haven't been a student in a very long time but, if they have room for one, a large monitor is useful doing accounting/law stuff. I imagine it's useful as a student.

As is a good keyboard and mouse.

I think a screen, aside from maybe a remarkable, would be a distraction for taking notes.

Laptop + 34 ultra wide for the dorm.

People still taking notes when you have AI that can summarize recordings easily?

Hand written notes improves the retention of information.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-writing-by-hand-is-better-for-memory-and-learning/