Back to School Laptop

flaneurs_lobster

This email title caused me to double-take today

Back to school essentials at Costco I HP Spectre x360 Intel Core Ultra 7 32GB RAM 512GB SSD 14 Inch Convertible 2 in 1 Laptop 💻 £1,189.99 ex VAT

Is this really the kind of hardware that schoolkids are expected to be lugging about these days?

elsien

Yeah, the only essential thing about that is the sign to go with it saying “please mug me.” 

400ixl

No, its a high end laptop that maybe only University students doing courses with high intensity compute would need.

Anything from a Chromebook to a basic Windows Laptop is all most students need.

Neil_Jones

For writing school assignments and only school assignments, complete and utter overkill.

If it was going also be used for some light gaming/older gaming as well, it may still be overkill, but it'll be better value.

That being said, that is a convertible laptop, and convertibles can quite expensive even on modest specifications.

Vitor

Kids just need a basic  laptop to access ChatGPT to do their homework for them.

flaneurs_lobster

Vitor said:

Kids just need a basic  laptop to access ChatGPT to do their homework for them.

Fifty years ago I used to copy swathes of stuff out of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, never did me any harm..... 

PRAISETHESUN

flaneurs_lobster said:

Vitor said:

Kids just need a basic  laptop to access ChatGPT to do their homework for them.

Fifty years ago I used to copy swathes of stuff out of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, never did me any harm..... 

To be honest, one of the more important things my research degrees have taught me is that it's okay not to know everything and it's actually more important to know how to find the information you need - be that searching the internet, journals, or various industry-specific databanks. If you have an entire encyclopedia of knowledge at your disposal that you learn/know how to navigate through, why wouldn't you take advantage of that?