Can anyone confirm that this has a built in smart card reader / common access card reader?
Would anyone mind chiming in about their thoughts for a soon to be freshman in college, please
Enjoy it but make good choices.
It’s pretty solid for less than $500. i7 processor, 1080p resolution, fast 256GB SSD but not the greatest in space. 16GB of RAM is decent for multitasking but DDR3 isn’t the latest and greatest and it’s maxed out at 16 gigs. Touch screen is a bonus.
Buy it.
This is a great laptop. I have the first generation which has similar specs. While the internal hard drive is small, external hard drives are fairly inexpensive anymore. I run Abobe Lightroom on it along with Office. The performance is very good. It is the best laptop I have owned.
I’ve had this EliteBook (i5 version) for the past 6 years and it’s still a great laptop. It’s originally intended for business environments, so it’s pretty solid.
My only minor complaint are the keys, my fingers tend to slip a little or the key press isn’t registered while going full speed. Not sure if the keys are slippery or they’re a little hard to press.
It is 7 to 8 years old, and heavy by today’s standards. Battery life about 2 hours full use. The laptop i7 I believe is dual core. A 256 GB ssd hard drive is decent not big. 16 GB ram is sufficient. I have one I bought for my 16 yr old and it is an OK desktop replacement occasional portable, but insufficient as a full time portable student laptop because of the battery life. Replaced it with a newer Macbook Air. Similar speeds online. Mac has superior battery life, weight, and wireless connectivity stability.
I purchased an 840 G4 from Woot last year for my wife. I upgraded the RAM from 8 GB to 16 GB and was happy to see there’s space to add a 2.5" hard drive, so there’s room to add more storage, it just needs to be the smaller 7mm size. Battery life is awesome since it’s only a 14" screen. Very light and portable. I liked it so much I bought a second one for myself.
Does anyone know what year is this laptop?
Hi there. Our specs from the vendor called it out as a Multicard reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC card reader). The Smart Card reader is an optional upgrade that these don’t have.
Hello. 2016.
Two kids thru college and two currently in. Thoughts:
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First check with the program at the school to make sure they don’t have specific requirements.
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Know your child - do they take care of stuff or are they hard on it? If they take of stuff a mid-level build quality consumer grade (no crappy Walmart/Staples $350 price-leaders) laptop might get them thru 4 years. If they are hard on stuff, there’s a fair chance no matter what you buy, you’ll be buying again. Then at least try to get into a business-grade model like this one or a Dell Latitude.
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Nothing less than an i5 CPU if you want it to have a better chance of it performing snappy all four years.
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Depending on the discipline of study, consider an iPad Pro and Pencil. Great for note-taking in class, especially in tight quarters where a laptop keyboard and screen are cramped. And can even get Microsoft Office on them if the school isn’t using Google apps. Working fine for our son in the Engineering School at Michigan. For heavy duty requirements, the school provides workstations.
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Talk to kids currently in the same program at the same school. Reputable schools provide a way to get in touch with current students.
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The Apple thing and schools… We love Apple mobile devices but only go there for laptops if the school requires it or you have the cash. Note Apple laptops get stolen before Windows laptops.
Results so far : two kids made it through four years with mid-grade consumer i5 laptops.
An amazingly consistent stat for the past 10 years - a mainstream name brand i5 cpu laptop is street-priced at about $500. Add $ for richer specs like 12/16 GB RAM or touch screen or larger storage.
@bluemaple - thank you so much! Great, great information. 2 kids in, 2 kids through college - whew, 1 is enough for me. She is going to U of Illinois for Veterinary. It occurred to me that the school would be a decent resource - she turned 18 in December and trying out her “I am an adult” wings, so I am trying to pick up info while not stepping on her toes. Want to be educated enough to make thought out, longer term purchases all the while nodding and smiling (and steering in the right direction).
I bought her the Samsung tablet with the S pen that Woot had on here the other day. I did not even consider it for note taking, what a fabulous idea. I am still pencil/pen and paper for most of my notes, I like being able to flip open the actual notebook still. I am old what can I say.
Congrats! You’ve got to be proud! A friend from high school is a vet and leads a very happy life, unlike some people doc’s we know.
The only way to make college financially pain free is to be really poor or really wealthy. No financial peace if you’re in the middle. Higher education is broken, especially financially. (Experience: 2 @ Michigan, 1 @ Cornell, and 1 entering either Michigan, Purdue, or Kettering.)
@bluemaple Congrats to you, as well - that is an impressive list of colleges!! She has always wanted to go to UW-Madison and even though we live “nearby” in IL, they don’t have a reciprocal in state agreement. It wasn’t until this year that she fully grasped that by the time she graduated 4 yrs as an out of state student, I could have bought her a house, so in state in shall be. Maybe veterinary school at UW.
If she considers out of state, Michigan State has a great vet school!