Tech 2 Laptop
Arleen Smelko
Southeast Technical College works hand-in-hand with industry to fill the workforce pipeline throughout the region. Whether you are looking to Sponsor a Scholar, serve on an industry board, or hold your company meeting at Southeast Tech, we would like to collaborate.
Students in Laptop Included programs are required to purchase a laptop through Southeast Tech. These programs require the use of a high-end laptop and software. The laptop that you purchase will be based on your major, and the computer will be added to your bill. VIEW LAPTOP INCLUDED Details
Software necessary for any Laptop Included program will be pre-installed on the laptops; however, since the software is licensed only for student use, students will not be allowed to keep this software after leaving Southeast Tech.
Incoming students in Laptop Included programs will be automatically billed for laptops needed for their majors. The full purchase price of the laptop will be billed in the first semester, and any excess Financial Aid that students receive will be applied to the cost of their laptops. Students will receive their laptops at JumpStart. The laptops will be pre-configured to include the software necessary for the students' majors. If students are starting classes in the summer, they will be able to bring their own laptops for the summer term or rent an STC laptop for the summer. New laptops are unavailable for purchase for the summer term.
Southeast Tech laptops come with a 3-year manufacturer warranty to cover parts and labor in case of manufacturer defect or mechanical failure. During the 3-year period, the I.T. Support Center will provide complete hardware warranty support for the original purchaser of laptops purchased through Southeast Tech, regardless of current enrollment status. Students are responsible for repair charges not covered under the manufacturer warranty.
While students are enrolled, the I.T. Support Center will provide full software support including virus and malware removal. After students graduate or terminate enrollment, limited software support is available. This includes reloading original software from the manufacturer or assisting with updated driver installations.
Loaner laptops are available free of charge for currently enrolled Southeast Tech students while their laptops are at the I.T. Support Center for service.
A stolen laptop is a criminal offense and must be immediately reported to law enforcement and the Southeast Tech I.T. Support Center. The I.T. Support Center will provide the serial number and model to any student whose laptop has been stolen. The student will be required to complete a theft report with the police department. The report number and police department the report was filed with must be provided to the I.T. Support Center. Students will be responsible for any remaining payments under the Conditional Sales Agreement and will need to work with their instructors and the I.T. Support Center to ensure that they still meet the requirements of their programs. Since loss and theft are not covered under the manufacturer warranty, Southeast Tech highly recommends that students insure their laptops against loss or theft, which can usually be done through a homeowners or renters insurance policy.
Setting a budget is a good place to start when shopping for the best laptop for yourself. The good news is you can get a nice-looking, lightweight laptop with excellent battery life at prices under $500. If you're shopping for a laptop around $500 or less, check out our top picks here, as well as more specific buying advice for that price range.
Higher-end components like Intel Core i-series and AMD Ryzen processors and premium design touches like thin-display bezels and aluminum or magnesium bodies have made their way to laptops priced between $500 and $1,000. You can also find touchscreens and two-in-one designs that can be used as a tablet or a laptop -- and a couple of other positions in between. In this price range, you'll also find faster memory and SSD storage -- and more of it -- to improve performance.
Above $1,000 is where you'll find premium laptops and two-in-ones. If you're looking for the fastest performance, the best battery life, the slimmest, lightest designs and top-notch display quality with an adequate screen size, expect to spend at least $1,000.
Deciding between MacOS and Windows laptops for many people will come down to personal preference and budget. Apple's base model laptop, the M1 MacBook Air, starts at $999. You can sometimes find it discounted or you can get educational pricing from Apple and other retailers. In general, it'll be at least $1,000 for a new MacBook, and the prices just go up from there.
For the money, you're getting great hardware top to bottom, inside and out. Apple recently moved to using its own processors, which resulted in across-the-board performance improvements compared to older Intel-based models. The company's most powerful laptop, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, still hasn't been updated to Apple silicon.
Again, that great hardware comes at a price. Also, you're limited to just Apple laptops. With Windows and Chromebooks (more on these below), you get an amazing variety of devices at a wide range of prices.
Software between the two is plentiful, so unless you need to run something that's only available on one platform or the other, you should be fine to go with either. Gaming is definitely an advantage for a Windows laptop.
MacOS is also considered to be easier and safer to use than Windows, especially for people who want their computers to get out of the way so they can get things done. Over the years, Microsoft has done its best to follow suit and, with Windows 11 here, it's trying to remove any barriers. Also, while Macs might have a reputation for being safer, with the popularity of the iPhone and iPad helping to drive Mac sales, they've become bigger targets for malware.
Yes, they are, but they're not for everyone. Google's Chrome OS has come a long way in the 10-plus years since they arrived and Chromebooks -- laptops that run on Chrome OS -- are great for people who do most of their work in a web browser or using mobile apps. They are secure, simple and, more often than not, a bargain. What they can't do is natively run Windows or Mac software.
The pandemic changed how and where a lot of people work. The small, ultraportable laptops valued by people who regularly travel may have suddenly become woefully inadequate for working from home. Or maybe instead of needing long battery life, you'd rather have a bigger display with more graphics power for gaming.
If you're going to be working on a laptop and don't need more mobility than moving it from room to room, consider a 15.6-inch laptop or larger. In general, a bigger screen makes life easier for work and is more enjoyable for entertainment, and it also is better if you're using it as an extended display with an external monitor. It typically means you're getting more ports, too, so connecting an external display or storage or a keyboard and mouse is easier without requiring a hub or dock.
For travel, stay with 13- or 14-inch laptops or two-in-ones. They'll be the lightest and smallest while still delivering excellent battery life. What's nice is that PC-makers are moving away from 16:9 widescreens toward 16:10- or 3:2-ratio displays, which gives you more vertical screen space for work without significantly increasing the footprint. These models usually don't have discrete graphics or powerful processors, although that's not always the case.
You can play games and create content on any laptop. What games you play and what content you create -- and the speed at which you do them -- varies greatly depending on the components inside the laptop.
For casual browser-based games or using streaming game services like Nvidia GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming, you don't need a powerful gaming laptop. Similarly, if you're trimming video clips, cropping photos or live-streaming video from your webcam, you can get by with a modestly priced laptop or Chromebook with integrated graphics.
For anything more demanding, you'll need to invest more money in discrete graphics like Nvidia's RTX 30- or 40-series GPUs. Increased system memory of 16GB or more, having a speedy SSD of at least 512GB for storage and a faster processor such as an Intel Core i7 or AMD Ryzen 7 will all help you get things moving faster, too.
The other piece you'll want to consider is the display. For gaming, look for screens with a high refresh rate of 120Hz or faster so games look smoother while playing. For content creation, look for displays that cover at least 100% sRGB color space or, better yet, 100% DCI-P3.
Remember to consider whether having a lighter, thinner laptop or a touchscreen laptop with a good battery life will be important to you in the future. Size is primarily determined by the screen, which in turn factors into battery size, laptop thickness, weight and price.
When it comes to deciding on a screen, there are a myriad number of considerations: size, resolution, what types of content you'll be looking at and whether or not you'll be using it for gaming or creative work. Higher resolutions are better for fitting more on a screen and look for a dot pitch of at least 100 pixels per inch (ppi) as a rule of thumb. If the color range is important, look for at least 100% sRGB, or better yet 100% DCI-P3.
The processor, aka the CPU, is the brains of a laptop. Intel and AMD are the main CPU makers for Windows laptops with a staggering selection between them. Generally, the faster the processor speed and the more cores it has, the better the performance will be. Apple makes its own chips for MacBooks, which makes things slightly more straightforward. Like Intel and AMD, you'll still want to pay attention to the number of cores -- the more, the better -- to gauge potential performance.
The graphics processor handles all the work of driving the screen and generating what gets displayed, as well as speeding up a lot of graphics-related (and increasingly, AI-related) operations. For Windows laptops, there are two types of GPUs: integrated or discrete. Because the iGPU splits space, memory and power with the CPU, it's better for smaller, lighter laptops, but it doesn't perform nearly as well as a dGPU. For things like video editing, gaming, design and so on, you'll need a dGPU.