I'm going to start taking CS classes soon, and I need to buy a laptop for them...

I'm going to start taking CS classes soon, and I need to buy a laptop for them. I don't have much money so what specs should I prioritize?

Learn to use Google and fuck off back to red dit

thinkpad
install gentoo
or void

long battery life
small and portable

also buy programming socks

Just get an x220 off ebay, should be plenty for all your needs. Get a T420 if you prefer a bigger screen.

If you have a 2.5GHz dual core CPU and 8GB of RAM and at least a SATA3 speed SSD then you can run literally anything you need to run to develop decent programs. Unless you plan on writing an OS in CurryScript. Then you're fucked, because there is no portable machine powerful enough to do that on. You'll need to rent out a few days on a Mongolian quantum computer running 35 biggerflops to compile your spaghetti OOP trash.

>for CS
>not getting a MacBook

HAHAHAHAH!

This but unironically.

>not getting a MacBook
because he isn't gay

MacBook pro then do a Linux virtual machine

>long battery life
>small and portable
The only two things that really matter. I had a heavy laptop with shit battery for a few months of my CS degree and it was hell trying to do anything with it.
Other than that just make sure your laptop is good enough to run an IDE and word processor.

Whatever you do don't be one of those kids who brings the big fucking gaming laptop to class that only uses Windows and also exclusively programs in C# trying to make shitty games nobody wants to play using Unity3d. There are so many of these "future video game programmer" types don't become a meme. For Uni I would get a used thinkpad x1 carbon or a used macbook air. You want something really light with a decent battery. If you need higher processing power your uni should have CS servers you can use if you aren't going somewhere shit.

Literally the two least important things.
Get a t430-40 or a t60, op.

You don't need a laptop.
Pen and paper is good enough.

You need a raspberry pi for programming

You don't need high specs for CS, and anything computationally intensive that they might make you do later on is better off being done on the schools machines via remote login. They'll likely have a cluster of servers that will outperform anything you buy or hobble together, and they're going to explicitly tell you to use it down the road after they give you a network account. Take advantage of that and save yourself some beer money.

if you can upgrade your own ram and ssd, get the best balance of screen and cpu you can find then throw in as much ram as possible

if not (most thinner stuff can't be upgraded), ram is most important

storage is no big deal if it's a secondary computer (ie: you've got a desktop already) as long it's ssd so you're not waiting ages for stuff to load

THIS
Use a ThinkPad X2xx put more ram and a ssd for more space, everything you need.

This was just voted best laptop for CS

If it's anything like the CS classes at my college, then even a chromebook will work.

We did all of our work over SSH on the school's mainframes.

Honestly, I'm just sick of my job in construction

is that a X1?

>ram is most important
8gb will get you by well enough, after 16gb I would prioritize CPU - but this user is right you'll want ram available.

It's really hard for me to prioritize because ram, decent cpu, and SSD are all must haves. In a sense I'd almost say make sure you're getting an SSD first because that will be the biggest cause of slowdown day to day. But you'll need ram for the IDE and the repeated compiling / testing / multitasking. And finally you'll need a CPU to run the whole business.

Don't waste your money. Just use the University's VAX cluster.

What one is that?

Go to computer store.
Play with different sized laptops and find a screen size you like and weight you like.

For the most part, I'd go with either an old Thinkpad T or X, depending on if you want more screen real estate or not.

Unless your college is literally pajeet land, you'll be remoting into things and doing things through the internet so you don't need a high end workstation.

Just get an i3, 8GB of RAM and an SSD. Ideally 1080p resolution too but 1600x900p is fine if it's 14" or less it's what I use on my thinkpad as resolution that size.

I'd honestly go with the T series, second hand, two RAM slots, i5 (ideally 5th gen but 4th is okay), SSD and 1600x900 at least.

two RAM slots so you can boost it to 16gb if needed otherwise a single 16gb stick is like 300 eurobucks here. i5 5th gen had the biggest iGPU improvement and also the best battery life improvement unless you count 7th gen for iGPU but then you're getting modern hardware which is like 800 minimum.

i study cs at uni and use my x220 every day, highly recommend

Corporate discounts on Lenovo site. Get P51 with an i7 for under $1300. Use it for a decade.