great machine, much more powerful than my aging thinkpads and dell precision...
don't use win11 on it tho, use linux or if really needed win10 enterprise iot ltsc 21h2
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
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Friendly reminder that Dell is a major ICE vendor.
Yes.
The multithread Passmark score on that CPU is 13254.
That's many times what you really need for the work you're describing above. There are a lot of games it could play pretty easily and games are far more demanding than a Zoom call.
The 7000 series Latitudes are actually OK machines for the most part. Once in a while Dell will have a model with a problem, but not enough to really worry about. As far as storage goes, spreadsheets and the like do not take a lot of room. If you want to lug around a lot of media files, like movies and TV shows then you will run out pretty quickly. Otherwise I wouldn't worry about it.
For my personal systems and those for my family I usually pick up older Dell laptops/towers and refurb them myself. I usually get several more years out of them. The system I'm typing this on is a Dell Precision 7550 that I rebuilt a year ago. Its predecessor was a Precision 7540 that my youngest uses to run games on and do his homework. My 7550 runs Battlefront II and BSG Deadlock easily.
Perfectly fine, if your worried about the storage get a bigger one and reinstall what ever OS you want on it before you get comfortable (queue linux enthusiests here).
16gb of ram is the functional minimum for windows 11 and I would not push for an upgrade at the current time. Just be aware of your memory useage, Windows 11, Chrome and Office 365 services are memory hogs.
For the CS stuff, dont worry, your machine needs to run a terminal. You WILL be connecting to more powerful machines to do the heavy lifting. Leasing AWS time or using machines on your schools network is likely how all that will go.
Furthermore, its a Dell, so you can throw the service tag into their support site and get the exact parts list and specs (if the bottom is scratched off, its in the BIOS too).
If you need tech support, just let us know (nerds are always here to help).
Just a note on this the ram isn't upgradeable (soldered on), just so OP is aware. Its 'fine' for most tasks, but not upgradable.
Boooo, companies need to fuckin stop that...
Honestly, for what they're using it for I'd say just get an external hard drive. Move completed assignments to the external as needed, that way they're not risking grades if you can't find it for a night or two. Unless they get some storage-heavy applications later, that should work fine.
That computer will do everything you listed, and be able to run most coding environments if you choose to do that as well. And 250 bucks is a great price, I'd say.
I am probably not the right person to answer, but to me it seems decent.
Hell, under current conditions, half the price is in that RAM.
Anyway, for the use case, definitely seems fine.
Now, for me the minimum requirements for such use case, if Windows isn't required, are simply a 64 bit CPU, 4GB of RAM, and an SSD. SSD makes a really huge difference.
It's now been maybe 2 years that it died, but I've been doing fine with a Core 2 Duo T7500, 4GB of RAM, Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT and random 128GB SSD powered laptop. It only struggled when I tried to use it for YouTube... and when I tried Gentoo on it. The compilation took 3 days just for me to realize I screwed up something in the config and had no network.
That sounds like a perfectly capable school machine (especially for $250). According to the service manual for that model, it looks like the storage can be upgraded (assuming that you can get your hands on an SSD). There's no mention of replacing the RAM, so I'd almost bet on that being soldered, but realistically 16gb should be plenty for the use cases you mentioned.