What laptop should I get?

Question

I am a 16-year-old junior in high school on a tight budget. I would like to have a competent laptop before I move out to attend college. A few of the colleges (Berklee, UNCSA, etc) I am looking at require most or all of their students to have a computer with certain software.

I am a musician and hope to make a career out of music. What kinds of laptops should I look at purchasing, if I want to use it to help me in recording or making music? Also, what types of software do I need to produce my own music? I am a singer & pianist, & am familiar with a software called Goldwave.

Other than that, any tips? I would like to purchase a laptop to help me with schoolwork, recording music, etc. by the time I graduate highschool in a year and a half.

Websites, stores, brands? (Shameful of me to ask this RIGHT after Black Friday.. oh well)
UNDER $300-400? Is that reasonable?
:)

? · Accepted Answer

I think your budget is reasonable and you can have a good decent laptop in this price range. There are many of the options available in the market which are good in this price range and also they can perform all of the tasks which you have mentioned.

I have one option in my mind which is under $400. It has Intel Core i3-3217U ULV 1.8 GHz Processor (3 MB Cache), 4 GB DDR3 RAM, 500 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive, 14-Inch Touchscreen Display with Intel HD 4000 Graphics. And it has Windows 8 and 4-hour battery life.  For further details here is a review about this laptop which will be helpful for you:

http://whatlaptop.org/good-laptop-400

Overall you can see that this is a good option for your tasks like schoolwork, recording music etc. And also it is under your budget as well.

Anonymous · Answer

I doubt it'd be reasonable. In GBP that'd be reasonable I believe, but you'd be rendering and editing audio, and probably videos?

Software, I'm not sure about as I live in the UK and don't do any of that but.

With video rendering, you need good processing power, and good memory. So, I'm assuming your looking for something with 8GB RAM, or buy the RAM separately and put it in. And at least a decent processor, with considering your making audio and need a lot of software, maybe a 1TB HDD. You'd need fast read/write speed (Comes from the hard drive)

1TB HDD
8GB RAM?
2.3GHz + processor, maybe more?

Your best bet would be to ask one of the music teachers and/or IT Experts at your college, so you get a rough idea of the required specs and what software you'll need.

EDIT: You're in America, so you live at your College, right? Or you can do, I'm not sure.

I'd advise upping your budget, or at least get a standard laptop JUST good enough to make them in lesson, and for any work you can do out of lesson or anything use a custom build computer.

You need a good graphics card with a decent GPU.
A decent processor.
A lot of hard drive space.
And a nice bit of RAM.

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What laptop should I get?

2 Answers