Recommended Computer for Statistician or M.S./PhD Statistics Student

Question

I'm looking for a high performance and durable computer to work with. It's primary use is for Statistical Modeling and Analysis.

Likely, I will need to use R, some SQL based programs (SQuirreL, for example), Python for data sets in excess of 2 GB.

I'm not the most computer-hardware oriented person either. If you may offer suggestions on a laptop well-suited for a student entering a Masters or PhD Statistics student, Statistician, or even Data Scientist, that would be great.

This is one of the few posts I've seen publicly discussing this question, but if I am going to invest a decent amount of money into something like this, a second opinion makes more sense here.

Answer 1

I would recommend a Precision 15 5000 Series (5510). It starts at about $1,360 and should meet your requirements.

It is reasonably powerful with the i5 6300HQ, with up to 1 terabyte of storage space. Fairly lightweight and portable. The Quadro CPU will improve graphics performance as well as provide CUDA capability for software that can utilize it.

Specs:

i5-6300HQ -- Quad Core, 2.3GHz base, turboboost to 3.2GHz

8GB DDR4 RAM

500GB HDD -- Different Harddrive configuration options available including: HDDs, SSDs, PCIe SSDs and self encrypting drives.

Nvidia Quadro M1000M -- 2GB GDDR5

FHD 15.6" Display

56Wh Lithium Ion Battery

~4lbs.