Reddit reviews Dell Latitude E7240 Business Laptop, 12.5 screen, Intel Core i7-4600U, 8GB DDR3L RAM, 256GB SSD, Windows 10 Professional (Renewed)

Generally speaking, the following are the main considerations when evaluating a computer:

• CPU: CPUs are generally the primary performant components of a computer. That means that, for the average use case of, say, browsing the internet and word processing, CPU speed is roughly synonymous with computer speed. That doesn't hold in all cases (and really falls apart for niche stuff like machine learning), but it's a decent rule of thumb.
  
  
• RAM: RAM is basically the component that allows you to have lots of stuff open at once. If you have 2GB of RAM, trying to run Chrome on top of Windows 10 will probably crash your computer almost immediately. If you have 32-64GB of RAM, you can probably run Photoshop, Chrome, and some high-performance video game like The Witcher III all at the same time without issue.
  
  
• RAM is also the component that allows you to manipulate larger datasets. If you're processing, say, single cell rnaSeq data locally, you're probably going to need a fair bit of ram.
  
  
• Disk: Most people think of disk (AKA hard drive) in terms of storage, but performance can be a factor here. Basically there are two types of disk; SSDs are more performant but have smaller storage, and HDDs have more storage but are less performant. An SSD will allow your machine to boot and open programs quicker, but for the price won't have as much storage space as an HDD. Often what people will do is boot off of a smaller SSD (say 256GB) for speed, and store their data on a 1TB HDD to get the best of both worlds.
  
  
• GPU: GPUs are (again, generally speaking) good for two things: display/graphics and hugely parallelizable tasks. In layman's terms: video games and deep learning. They can easily be the single most expensive component of a machine, but a good GPU will crank out tasks that require hours of CPU time in minutes or even seconds.
  
  All that being said, without having a very good idea of what your day-to-day computing needs are, and what the heaviest-duty tasks you'll be doing will be, it's hard to know what to recommend.
  
  If you have very good computing infrastructure, and won't need to do any development or heavy-lifting locally, then most of what you'll be doing with your personal computer is browsing the Internet and word processing. For that I honestly recommend a budget option, because it's difficult to tell the difference between a $500 machine and a $2000 machine with those tasks. A middle of the road Chromebook should do just fine, as will something like a Dell Latitude -- which is my personal machine, and I can recommend for both the performance/reliability of the computer itself and the efficacy of the refurbishing process. If you want a little more oomph and have a little more cash, the baseline MacBook Air should do just fine as well.
  
  If you'll need to be doing development locally, and mild-to-moderate compute -- for instance if you're taking computational classes that require you to do homework on your own machine -- the best bang for your buck in a single machine is probably a MacBook Pro.
  
  If you're pretty much on your own for all of your computing needs -- research that'll involve large datasets and/or ML, coursework, etc -- and/or you've got money to burn, I recommend building your own desktop for heavy computing and getting a budget laptop for mobility (remote access can be set up to give you access to your desktop from your laptop). This is where selecting components and knowing what you're doing is imperative, so this recommendation is totally spitballing, but something like this build should be able to tackle anything you can reasonably be expected to do on your own.
  
  Bear in mind again that your needs may vary significantly from the needs that build is designed to address -- and that the price of video cards/GPUs is way inflated at the moment -- but that's a decent skeleton for a high-performance machine, and the walkthrough of setting it up is pretty good.
  
  If you can give me more specifics I can try to refine my recommendations, but without any context I think this post should be a fair guideline as you're shopping for a machine.

I would recommend this [Dell Latitude] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07116R1GY/?tag=bkadamos_alltest-20) because it comes with everything you need, 4th generation, i7 dual core CPU, 8GB of ram for smooth multitasking, good SSD storage of 256GB for faster boot up and loading, 12.5 inch HD screen which is a must have for this price range, high build quality, it’s certified refurbished, lightweight, and it is within your budget.
If you don't like this option then I would recommend that you check my best gaming and college laptop to compare it with similar options.