Buy a refurbished laptop from newegg. I got my acer from them for like 625$ and its worked for a good 3 years so far. It has a touchscreen and 1080p panel with backlit keyboard.

Refurbished on newegg are actually really worth it!

Try This.

Used this for most of grad school.

If you're not going to game then just drop 200 bucks on a used laptop at any electronic outlet and just use dropbox or w/e to keep your stuff. Save your money.

honestly just look into anything with decent RAM and an SSD. id imagine a lot of your work would be saved online (google drive) so storage shouldnt be a big deal imo.

bought my current laptop off amazon warehouse, refurb. was maybe 450. has it two years. has everything you mentioned, and as a bonus i run tf2 off it at ~130 fps ish. so look there before buying new.

but yeah a college laptop should not cost 800 dollars. especially because you're gonna be carrying it to class in a backpack every day and stuff. anything could happen to it.

I just started college this year. All my life I've been on the Apple/Mac hate train, but a comp sci professor as well as a family member who programs for Amazon suggested I get a MacBook pro for college. So I ended up getting one and it turns out I really like it.

I think you should definitely wait until you've picked your college (which I'm assuming you should have done bc it's May) and just email some comp sci professors for their opinions, your university website will likely have input on what laptop to get as well. Whatever you choose though, I'd heavily recommend your laptop being SSD based. I've ruined so many laptop HDDs in less than a year. Additionally, I love being able to open up and turn on my machine really fast during class. Your professors aren't gonna wait for your machine to turn when you're late to class.

Get excited friend, college is the fucking best.

Can't go wrong with a thinkpad. Even better if it's refurbished.

How do you ruin laptop HDDs? If it's not spinning while you carry it around it should resist to shocks shouldnt it

I just finished college as a comp sci / math student, hopefully this is helpful :)

For convenience in college, make sure the laptop you get has an SSD. I really can't emphasize this enough. I made the mistake of getting a laptop without an SSD and it was a huge pain- it simply took too long to start up and do basic tasks.

Also, depending on your lecture halls and classrooms, access to plugs to charge your laptop in class could vary. Try to get a laptop with good battery life. A lot of gaming-focused laptops don't really excel here and mine certainly didn't.

Idk your school, but there's a solid chance this won't be the case. You can probably find out, but it's likely using either Linux or mac will be simpler for comp sci. That said, getting a windows laptop wouldn't really be an issue, you can have a linux partition or a VM or whatever you choose to use.

This. Good luck in all your classes and everything. Have fun!

I'd recommend any of the Dell XPS line. Currently finishing my freshman year at college and I've loved the Dell XPS 15 that I bought for school. They range in prices but the 13 in model would probably be better for your price range and would still be a great laptop. My battery lasts pretty much a whole day of use plus it's fairly light. I paid a bit extra for one with an SSD which I think was completely worth it, but I've used one without an SSD and it was still pretty fast.

If you're not too scared of buying used you can find a model year or 2 old 1200$ class laptop in your price range

I've been using a Surface Pro 4 all year and its never really slowed down at all. I'm not sure how much they are in the US but i paid £800 and got it with the stylus and keyboard. Its really useful for lectures and seminars cos its basically a tablet aswell so really portable.

OS might be dependent on what exactly your department does but in my case i use eclipse which is on every OS. i have it on my mac and the pcs for in class labs are running some linux version (i think it's ubuntu or something similar). Look at what your specific university recommends for computers.

Also look if they have a student laptop program. Some (most?) universities partner with laptop companies to get you a discount if you buy the laptop through your universities bookstore. For example I could buy a macbook air with applecare for $210 cheaper. They probably won't have a great variety but it's a good way to save some money if one of them looks good for you. Plus, at least in my case you get tech support through the university and if it breaks they have a loaner pool while yours gets repaired. Still always be sure to price shop, it could always be cheaper somewhere else.

RAM is the big ticket item for most cs students running vms.
It's also 2018 so you need an ssd.
In terms of battery just get an LG Gram that shit lasts like 10 hours

Might be worth bringing your pc. You can make due with a cheaper laptop that only has to do internet / notes / basic programming, while your pc deals with all the intensive stuff like VMs, gamedev, programs/scripts you leave running for days, etc. Can get even more mileage out of the laptop if you use a lightweight linux distro, and then leave all your windows stuff to your pc.

Gotta second a lot of people, windows isn't a necessity. At least with any university I've seen (admittedly in canada), all required coursework will either not matter what OS you use, or require access to a unix machine anyway (with windows users either dualbooting, running a vm, or just going to some computer lab for that).

That said, projects on the side might require windows, depending on what you want to get into. Gamedev for example can be tough on linux just because not all the tools you'd want to use are available, and some of the open-source alternatives have a much higher learning curve and aren't industry standards.

alienware

I second this, never had apple products up until going into college. Got a really good deal from a coworker on a MacBook and have had no regrets since purchasing. Am also a CS major and so far its been able to handle everything thrown at it. They are extremely easy to use and do exactly what I need it to. Should be noted that I also brought my desktop to school but having the mac for taking notes in class, writing papers outside my dorm, etc. was extremely nice. Look on sites like ebay and craigslist for a used one. The difference between a few year old mac and a new one are minimal spec wise and the huge difference in price comes down to how badly you want something like the touchbar on the new Pros, which IMO is not worth it.

100% get a laptop with an SSD
Googling 'laptop deals' and looking for day or week long discounts can also save u > 200
It's very unlikely that you will need windows (or any other OS) specifically for your comp sci college stuff but i would recommend it anyway for general game and software compatibility

Refurb thinkpad with linux is the way to go for compsci. Unless you want to fork out the money for a mac.You definitely will appreciate having something running unix.

1) Don't buy a new windows based machine if you're looking to spend under $800, they all have god awful build quality and most still use spinning rust for their storage.

I'd personally suggest buying a used business class think pad. The things are built like a tank. (They are designed to be mistreated by your average disgruntled employee.) Dropping it is more likely to leave a mark on the floor than the computer. I'd say grab something like this and put LInux on it. It would absolutely outclass 90% of laptops sold to consumers under a 800 dollar category in terms of build quality and reliability.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T440P-Laptop-2-6-i5-4300M-8GB-480GB-SSD-14-WIFI-Windows10/253711999382?hash=item3b1269e196:g:tRoAAOSwScJa6er0

personally for me, ebay is god tier for finding really good refurbished laptops for cheap, ultimately though if it's just for school, it is best to just buy a cheap but stable laptop that can just get you through

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