Laptops in 2012: Evolution, but Not Always in a Good Way

Over the last 12 months, significant changes have occurred to warrant a reassessment of my recommendations for laptops for students.  Let’s look first at the PC business and then I will discuss Macs.

PCs:

The price of a very good laptop that I would recommend has fallen to $600 (down from $700 a year)—that is very good news.  There are good laptops for $550 (see Dell).  I would still away from the laptops under $400.  The PC industry should be ashamed of itself for offering laptops with Pentium Processors because the battery life and overall performance are abysmal.  I think an i3 processor, 4g of RAM, and a 500g hard drive is the bare minimum.

AMD has not offered laptop processor that can match Intel’s products in performance and price.  Stay away from AMD and Intel’s atom processors, and you will thank me every time you boot your computer.  I’m still hoping AMD can somehow offer a competitive product that does not scrap the bottom of performance measurements time after time, but that has not happened yet.  Intel is the superior product in terms of price/performance.  If it does not have the Intel sticker, do not purchase it.

Netbooks do not make sense anymore.  A good netbook will cost $500.  For $50 more you will get a quality laptop that should last you four years.  AMD’s Vision processor gave netbooks a little boost in performance, but they remain even more obsolete than they were a year ago.  The quality of netbooks has been dreadful.  Just pick one up and you can feel the cheap materials from which they are built.  Please don’t waste your money.

The flash drives that are appearing on laptops don’t have enough memory.  A 128g hard drive is just too small.  The 256g model is still not enough.  I have no doubt that flash drives are the future, but until an affordable 500g flash drive comes along, just sit it out.  For education, you need hard drive space.  I would go with a 750g hard drive if you could afford it.  I like the 7200 rpm versions better, a bit faster with only a small drain on battery life.

 

Macs:

Apple discontinued the White MacBook, the laptop that I considered the best overall laptop for a student.  The company replaced the only sub $1000 laptop with an ultra light model with a slow processor and a small flash drive.  Sorry, I think Steve Jobs made a serious mistake.  The only Apple laptop under a $1000 is now a MacBook Air that is a lightweight in every sense of the word and will not suit the performance need of a student for four years of college.  A 128g hard drive (up from 64g at the beginning of last year!) is a joke.  And a 11-inch screen will get really annoying really quick.  Student will have large video files that they will need to work with and this computer cannot handle it.  The only Mac alternative is a 13 inch MacBook Pro, which cost $1200.  Unfortunately, that is the minimum recommendation for a Mac laptop that I can in good conscious give for a student.  Yes, it is twice the price of my minimum purchase recommendation for a PC.  If my white MacBook dies tonight, I would probably seek to purchase a used 13 inch MacBook Pro to cut down on costs.  If you really want a Mac, I suggest you do the same, but only through the Apple Store Online.  Apple offers a full warranty on its used laptops.

Although I am a big fan of Apple, I hesitate to recommend a Mac unless you have a lot of money to spend on a laptop.  In their vision of the future, Apple is forgetting that few students have $1,200 to spend.  A desktop Mac mini is excellent, but it is not a laptop.

Would a $500 iPad suffice?  No.  It is a handy tool, but not a laptop replacement.  I don’t own one.  I’ll see what the new model will look like in February before I make a decision to buy one.  Students need Microsoft Office and other professional program that don’t work on the Apple tablet.   Tablets compliment a good laptop.  Please remember that when the “cool” factors hits you at the Apple Store like it does me every time I visit one, let reason prevail.  The tablet has its place, but you still need a real computer.   A tablet as a serious laptop replacement is still in the future. You will need a real keyboard to do serious work.   I am cheering Apple on to finally come up with a practical replacement to the keyboard.  I don’t see one yet.