Will this laptop suit my needs?/ Is it a good deal?

QuantumDecrypt

Commendable
Jun 6, 2016
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I have been wanting a laptop for awhile now, Since I have started back up in college I thought now might be a good time to finally get one. My Question is, I know the laptop will be able to use Word, and iTunes and other small utility software, but I am taking classes where i need to be able to run eclipse, and Virtual Machines with out fear of crashing or having the run speed drop. Will this Laptop Be able to do that?

Inspiron 15 3000 Non-Touch
Intel® Core™ i5-5200U Processor (3M Cache, up to 2.70 GHz)
8GB, 1600MHz, DDR3L;
1TB 5400 rpm Hard Drive
Intel® HD Graphics 5500
15.6-inch HD (1366 x 768) Truelife LED-Backlit Display
Windows 10 Home, 64-bit, English

This laptop is available on dells Site linked with my college, so i cant link the web page but i tried to copy all the vital Information.

Another thing to note is my cost for this is $489.99, Is that a Good price for this laptop?
 
Solution


If you are emulating...
If you want to be doing virtual machines you should at absolute bare minimum get an i5 that is a Q series, better yet an i7.

The U series (even the i5 and i7 versions) are just dual cores with threads.
You can practice with virtual machines on these, but they wont have the performance to run any remotely demanding applications on them.
 
Depends what you're doing in said virtual machines. If they're running heavy scripting workloads, you'd want a more powerful CPU.

I've got an i7-5600u (2C, 4T) for my work laptop, and have been very impressed with it coming from a 4-core i7. Incredible battery life, good performance for everyday workloads, and makes very little heat. However, when you start throwing 30 things at it, as expected for a 2 core processor, it chokes.
 

QuantumDecrypt

Commendable
Jun 6, 2016
58
0
1,640


Basically I will be loading other versions of Linux and windows to look at the inner workings, and test out/explore operating systems. Everything else will be done on the actual machine, Eclipse being the most intensive with maybe some little computer games but not much.
 


If you are emulating anything besides the base OS itself within the virtual environments, and running multiple ones at the same time, you should probably go for an i5-6300HQ or i7-6700HQ and 16 GB RAM. That will bump the price up a bit, though.
 
Solution