Laptops for Students
Why students need laptops
When you start college the first thing you are going to need to purchase is a laptop. You can’t even register for classes until you have a computer to do it on. Sure you could go to the school library or use your parents, but where is the independence in that, besides you are going to need a laptop for more than just registering for classes. In fact almost every aspect of college: academic, social, future career, and current job are going to be online, to some extent at least.
If you have already decided you need a laptop go ahead and skip down to the section about what you, the college student, need in a laptop.
More and more homework assignments, papers, and tests are done on a computer and then submitted electronically to the professor via email or a website. There is simply no avoiding the need of a computer if you want to well in classes.
Going off to a university is also more than just getting good grades, you need to have a good time to balance out the stress of your calculus classes. Facebook, twitter, and other online social media can be the lifeblood of your social world. Parties, concerts, and other events all get announced on these social websites. There is another way in which laptops are used to keep you sane during school: movies on demand. Services like Hulu, Youtube, Netflix and others are the go to source of relaxation when your brain has turned to mush from memorizing the different parts of the human body in anatomy class.
Another reason you need a laptop is to communicate with parents. This may be your first time spending an extended period away from home. In fact this might be the perfect way to get them to pay for your new laptop! Video chatting! Skype and other programs allow you to visually stay in touch no matter where you are. Parents will love this, you can even use your laptop to give them a virtual tour of your new dorm.
The other area pertaining to work are also very computer dependent. Almost all job searches are now done online. If you ever want to find a job during school and then after you need a computer so you can spend the countless hours it takes to find the job for you.
What students need in a laptop
Processor
What parts of the computer, or in other specifications or specs, are important to the average college student. First and fore most is the processor. Nothing is a bigger waste of time than waiting for the computer to think after simple operations like saving a paper or opening a web browser. Now you don’t need a super fast computer, but you definitely need a multicore processor to handle all the multitasking you will be doing. Dual cores are good, quad cores are better. The slowest processor you should be looking at is a 2.4 GHz dual core. Anything less and your shooting yourself in the foot.
RAM
The second area you want to make sure meets your needs is RAM. This is the memory of the computer, the more you have the more stuff you can do at once. High resolution pictures for example are quite large, so viewing them on a computer with insufficient RAM can make it a very slow process. The minimum RAM you should get would be 2 GB. Now mind this is the very bottom, if it costs $40 or $50 to get 3 or 4 GB you should get it. 4 GB is right about where you want to be. Getting more than 4, unless you are editing video or photos a ton is not really necessary.
Hard Drive
The hard drive size is another area that is important in the student laptop. A music collection can take anywhere from 10 GB to 100 GB depending on big it is. DVDs and home videos are very large. Uncompressed DVDs are 4.5 GB each and Blu-rays are around 35 GB each! This means if you want to carry your DVD collection with you a very large hard drive will be required as only 20 DVDs make almost 100 GB. The operating system and programs can be anywhere from 20 GB to over 100 GB (if you have a lot of games). Hopefully you can use these figures to gauge the hard drive size you are going to need. If this is your only computer I wouldn’t go less than 500 GB, as they are pretty cheap. If your laptop is secondary to a desktop then maybe 250 GB will be good enough.
Accessories
There are a few accessories that will make life much better and easier with a laptop. First and fore most is an external backup hard drive. You can’t believe the stress that will most assuredly arise when a hard drive/your whole fails. If you keep the laptop long enough something will surely go wrong. Of course it doesn’t have to be hardware failure, it could be some virus you got by clicking on a facebook or email link. External hard drives for laptops have never been cheaper with multiple terabytes for under $100. Its a must have and its cheap, there is no excuse for now having one.
A webcam is essential for communicating with friends back home and with people meet at school. Most new laptops have one built in, if not they can usually be upgraded to have one. If you don’t have that luxury finding a USB webcam is very easy and very cheap.
Netbook vs Standard Laptop
One temptation that many students have, usually in order to save money, is to get a netbook instead of a normal laptop. This can be a perfectly sane thing to do because there are many advantages to having a netbook. But, in buying a netbook you should be aware of the consequences this choice has on college students.
The biggest advantage in getting a netbook is its portability. They are so small and light that they will fit in your backpack without you really noticing them. This can be a lifesaver if your backpack is loaded full of textbooks (which way a ton). They also have a bonus feature of having a mobile broadband connection built into them, so if you can get mom and dad to pay for it, allows you to be connected where ever you are. There is nothing like studying in the park and still being able to bring your laptop is there.
The big disadvantage however is that they don’t have an optical drive. This means if someone gives you a CD with their favorite band on it…there is nothing you can do. If you need to install a program from a DVD you’ll have to get someone else to rip it onto their computer and then send an ISO of the DVD over the network to your computer and then install it using a virtual DVD drive. Its not really hard, just a few extra steps and requires a willing friend.
Another problem you may encounter with netbooks is that they typically have reduced size keyboards. So if you need to type a lot these tiny keys could slow you down. From people who have netbooks they say you get used to the cramped arrangement, but if you have big fingers you might want to avoid netbooks for this reason alone.
Where to Find the Best Deals on Student Laptops
There are many retailers who cater to student needs. Many retailers even have back to school sales that give steep discounts to students. School bookstores can also be great places to buy student laptops because manufacturers give them an academic discount which then gets passed on to you.
Related posts:
- Where can you get the Best Laptops for Under $300 Online?
- Where to Buy Cheap White Laptops
- The Best Laptop Brand among Laptops under 500 dollars
- Laptops Under $200
- Laptops Under $300
Tags: laptop, laptops for students, netbook, students
