Ladies and Gentleman,

I'm out of the loop when it comes to a 4 year university, and laptops generally too. My niece is graduating from High School shortly, and she needs a laptop to last her college career. Could be 4 years, or it could be more/less. I'm not entirely sure of the budget, but under $1,000 was mentioned. If I had to guess, I'd guess they'd prefer it a couple hundred dollars cheaper than that even.

My Niece is not technologically savvy, and her OS experience is with Windows. She does not currently have an art or graphic design major, and I don't expect that to change. Hopefully that's a starting point.

Any input and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

If she just needs something to be able to type up papers and research with maybe streaming videos upon occasion, there are several options. There are ultrabooks which are lighter and easier to carry too and from classes, and then there are full on laptops... but either way unless she needs it for gaming or graphic work getting one for under $1000 is easy.

What he said. Find out if she has a preference in screen size too.

I doubt screen size is that important to her. 15-17 inches should suffice.

I didn't mean to go big, I mean to go small. 15 should be the top-end in screen sizes for a laptop that's going to be touted around by a girl.

What JayD said, the bigger the screen size the heavier it becomes, which if she is taking it to each of her classes will be a pain. For example, in her first year my sister went against my advice and bought a 15 inch mac book, after her first year she sold it and bought a 13inch mac book air. Which is also why I would suggest an ultrabook, size and form factor is similar to a mac book air but much cheaper on the cost.

Makes sense. I told her she wouldn't want it too big. It would be hard to handle something like that. She told me size does matter though. I hope we were talking about laptops still.


Okay then, what about brands. Bill Gates is a douche so maybe I should go Apple?

Bak3d,

You thought you were the only slut in the family? :P

anyway...

For the brands reliability, take a look:



source: http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/laptop-brand-ratings

For deals: Slickdeals

I'd pick something with a current gen intel CPU if you don't need to spend any money on dedicated gfx. Besides intel graphics is probably decent nowadays.

Great! Thank you gentleman.