Originally Posted by PandaBear
No, absolutely no.
You don't need a 4G LTE card in a university, that's a waste and the data plan for laptop is going to eat you alive (they know if you use your unlimited phone card for laptop and will shut you off). Wifi is everywhere in college.
If someone has a commute, having 4G can definitely allow for stuff to get done. Anyways, I would find it very useful if I were to be in my situation in college again. And the cost is minimal -- adding an extra SIM for data-only can be $5-$10/month. I guess one could tether with a phone too.
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You also don't need a 4K display for school. I'm working and my job doesn't even provide that nor our circuit designer running Cadence, that's nonsense. We get 2 27" or 1 34" monitor of whatever resolution, that's it. There is absolutely no reason a student need more than people who work on this 9 hrs a day.
A Dell U2718Q / U2720Q is what, $400 for a 27"? Big deal. A good quality screen is a must. Trying to do everything on a laptops screen sounds like a nightmare.
A student may very well spend just as much time, if not more infront of a screen as a working person, especially in engineering.
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Stay away from ebay or refurber, the warranty is important for a reason, and stay away from the dock, they die a lot more often than the laptop (USB-C one these days), he won't stay at his desk enough to make use of it.
I've never had a dock die on me. And the dock has saved the ports on my computers, which are basically brand new. Unlike tons of computers I know of used by typical students that have very worn USB/Ethernet ports. Especially Ethernet ports, which are incredibly fragile. And of course most time will be spent at a desk, at home. Or at least that was what it was like when I went through engineering. Long nights/hours of assignments, coding, reports, etc.