Surface Book 2 vs Thinkpad T480?

As a college student which one would you rather to get? a surface book 2 or a fully loaded Thinkpad T480? both have 16gb of ram and 512 Nvme. The only issue with the Thinkpad is that it has a 1080p display, however you get an external battery with it and you can choose the higher capacity battery which offer really long hours of usage.

I would like to hear your opinion and which one would you buy and why?

What are you studying, and would you benefit from the dedicated graphics card in the Surface Book?

I’m considering either Engineering or Computer Science. Not sure yet.

Depending on your university you might need to install/dualboot linux for projects/software. The Thinkpad is the better option in this case since the surface’s hardware isn’t fully supported.

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Uhmm go with the think pad. Linux support is better and in either direction you will need it.

I encourage you to look at the coreboot offerings from system76. I wish I had those going through engineering school (im graduated now)

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I’m not sure if it will work for me. I’m don’t use Linux that often.

Well even with windows don’t do the SB2 its kinda nice but fixing is way harder.

The think pad is still much better.

Also realize that right now when your going through engineering school is one of the best times to switch to Linux so thats why I said system76. You can establish a workflow, prevent you from distracting games quite more often than not. All software you use for engineering supports it etc.

you’ll find after going through electrical or mechanical engineering you become far more pragmatic and frugal about tech. At least I’ve found this out, I care more about use case longevity and serviceability when it breaks and not so much buy and ditch every couple years :wink:

Yes, I indeed like the Thinkpad and the fact that it is easy to fix. Regarding the Linux which distro would you advise me to use? I’m kind of beginner and I want something that looks nice and a little bit simple.

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Linux Mint cinnamon. Its the easiest distro for a beginning on both Mac and windows. Everything works out of the box. Zero need for much else.

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Dear OP,

Pick the ThinkPad for engineering or CS, It seems more robust.

About Linux: they’re All the same under the hood. Don’t distrohop too much. Mint is more than enough. Just search other distros If you’re having some serious hardware incompatibility

Can’t disagree about the serviceability of the Thinkpad vs a Surface Book. In terms of performance, they’re not miles apart, either.

Regarding the OS situation, you may want to hold off dedicating yourself to one thing or another, as with engineering you may have to use software that’s platform specific (i.e. Windows only). Of course there’s nothing wrong with dabbling, anyway.

I would go for Lenovo. Get a docking station for home use…

Inclined to agree with this. Also more eGPU friendly in my experience if you want to have a mobile gaming setup later.

Yep. I was getting more at the Lenovo pro dock. But if memory serves me the T480 has thunderbolt so an external GPU enclosure should work. Didn’t think of this at first.

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Yeah buddy. Was my exact setup for a while.