[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
On Tue, 8 Dec 2020 16:51:35 +0000 Tom via list <list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > My eldest is off to Uni next year (all fingers crossed) and the > missus wants to get her a laptop for xmas. Looking at aHonor > MagicBook 14 inch Ryzen 5 8GB 256GB for the moment. She's going to be > doing bio-chemistry or similar and wondering if anyones got any ideas? > > Tom te tom te tom > > Hi Tom, I'm replying to your original post although I've been following the discussion with interest. My suggestion lies someway between the cheap, cheerful and fairly functional and the other thing. I've just bought a Lenovo Thinkpad: i7, 16G, ITB, W10. It's a bit small, so I'd go bigger if I had another £800 to do it again. I've just upgraded a server to a Lenovo (I've always gone for Dell in the past) as the Thinkpad was such a good linux experience. The BIOS rocks. I am a biochemist. The Debian science, maths and statistics blends have much to offer the higher level scientist. My suggestion is therefore to get the best spec i7 Lenovo Thinkpad you can stretch to (swap a bit of speed for at least 16G and 1T storage if you have to) and invest in another 2T external storage for backup: 3 years is a long time and a lot of data to lose. Dual boot it W10/Debian and checkout the blends. She will then have two years to learn how to use the tools (tell her to master Texworks straightaway...). Come her third year, her dissertation will be half written before Christmas. If she's thinking to do postgrad, then she'll be running out of the trap. And she'll still be able to boot into W10 on those occasions when they need to 'Team' up. But in deference to the other thing, if she were doing graphics, I'd go with the Mac, no question. Hope this helps. fraser -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dcglug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq