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The decision to purchase a laptop for school can be one of the most nerve-wracking purchases one can make. Will it be fast enough? What size do I get? What does it come with? And most importantly, how much does it cost? Don’t automatically buy the lowest price laptop you find. There’s a lot more to consider than just cost. Read on to find out how these factors should balance out in an ideal college student’s laptop.
Being a college student myself helps me keep the mind-frame of a student at the forefront of this discussion. There are essentially two main components you need to focus on when looking at the speed of a machine. RAM (memory) and the Processor will determine how fast your computer can handle tasks and access stored data.
Big Budget: Hewlett- Packard Pavilion DV6: This model is highly customizable through the HP online site, but you can expect to pay a bit more for it. A Pentium i5 processor with 6+ gigabytes of RAM will keep this machine up to industry standards for a good four years (or five for any super seniors). This particular model also includes standard HDMI out ports ( to turn your HD tv into a monitor) and optional blu-ray drives. For the price this model is easily one of the most powerful and versatile machines a student should throw down their wallet for. Of course, a price tag starting at $700 and quickly working its way up with each add on could be putting itself out of a student’s admittedly limited budget. This could be one to ask Santa Claus (or your parents) for.
Medium budget: Toshiba Satellite L655-S5107: This model boasts 4gb of RAM and a Pentium i3 processor that is essentially an industry standard at this point in time. You’ll be sacrificing a couple of features that are standard on HP models like the HDMI port, but for some this won’t make much of a difference. In this model you’ll be gaining a good inch of screen size, but lose some of the resolution as the video card is not as powerful as the DV6. With a price tag of $600 dollars, this model tends to be a little better fit for those students paying with loan money.
Low Budget: MSI CR500-438US: MSI has been a major motherboard manufacturer for many years now, but has recently stormed onto the scene as a major PC manufacturing competitor. Most of their machines tend to be a bit more cost effective as their reputation in the fully assembled computers industry is in its early stages. This particular model includes 4gb of RAM, a 15 inch screen, and a Pentium dual core processor. It’s a fairly cut down model in almost every other aspect, but does include the HDMI output found on the HP. At an asking price of $500 this represents one of the most competitively priced machines discussed. It should do everything a student needs it to, but not a whole lot else.
All of these machines should be able to handle the challenges a college student’s professors may throw at it, but you have to consider how long term your investment will be. Hopefully after talking about some of these laptops you have a better idea of what too look for in a good student PC.
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Walk around any college campus today, and you will see that many of the students have laptops. You might also notice that most of them seem to be made by either Apple or Dell. But just which are the best laptops for college use?
Apple laptops are certainly popular. But what do they offer? Apple have three different laptop lines: the MacBook, the MacBook Pro, and the MacBook Air, with standard prices from $999, $1199, and $999, respectively. However, college students can take advantage of the generous discounts available from Apple’s Education Store, so you needn’t pay as much as this.
The MacBook comes in only one model. It is white, has a 13.3″ display, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and up to 10 hours of battery life, all weighing in at 4.7 pounds. It is the best laptop computer for college students who just have to have an Apple, but are on a limited budget.
The MacBook Pro comes in six variations. All are made from sleek metal. The displays vary between 13.3″ and 17″, the processor between 2.4GHz and 2.66GHz, RAM is 4GB, the hard drive is between 250GB and 500GB, and battery life is up to 10 hours, and the weight is as little as 4.5 pounds up to 6.6 pounds for a 17″ model. Prices range from $1199 to over $2000. The MacBook Pro offers the college student the ultimate portable Apple experience, with the most options, but with prices to match.
The MacBook Air wins among the Apples when it comes to portability. It is super thin and weighs no more than 2.9 pounds. It comes in four versions. The display is 11.6″ or 13.3″, the processor is a 1.4GHz or 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, RAM is 2GB, instead of a hard drive there is 64GB, 128GB or 256GB of flash-based storage, and battery life is up to 5 hours of doing typical college work. Prices range from $999 up to $1599. The specifications are quite a bit lower than the similarly priced MacBook and MacBook Pro models. However, they are more than sufficient for the typical college work of word processing, emailing, and browsing the web. Where the MacBook Air really wins is in being so small and light, leaving the college student with plenty of spare carrying capacity for all those heavy textbooks.
For the college student on a real budget, Dell laptops are an excellent choice. The Inspiron 15 costs as little as $399, yet is a very capable model. You can stand out on campus by selecting a blue or a pink color. The base model has a competent Intel Celeron 2.20GHz processor, 2GB RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and a 15″ display. All in all, a solid choice for the student wishing to make her money go as far as possible.
Alternatively, if you want something small, highly portable, and even cheaper — though with lower specifications — the Inspiron Mini 10 Netbook is an excellent choice. Costing as little as $299, and weighing as little as 2.66 pounds, it is light on your wallet and light in your bookbag. It has a lowly, but energy efficient Intel Atom 1.66GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and a hard drive of up to 160GB. Despite being the least capable laptop discussed here, it is the cheapest and lightest, and works well for carrying around campus, taking notes in lectures, and keeping up with emails and the web.
Note that all five of the laptop lines we’ve covered allow you to connect to your college’s wifi networks out of the box. No matter your budget and needs as a student, there is a laptop model to suit you. Even if you want to show off with a fashionable Apple, reasonably priced models are available. If you want the very best, Apple also has the model for you. And if you want the best value for money, check out Dell’s offerings.
This post continues our Best College Laptops 2010 series.
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This guest post was written by James Donell, one of our regular readers.
Asus derives its popularity through the sheer variety of products available to consumers. And this is all well and good—but for most of us, this vast plenitude of options just isn’t that important. All we care is that, as far as our preferences go, we’ve got one or two options that match. But, with Asus’ broad and accommodating product line, there truly is something for everyone–even multiple somethings. And being a former undergrad myself, I know firsthand which “somethings” these are. So, the following provides an overview of the three most attractive Asus notebooks for the undergrad. Of course, this is just one man’s opinion.
1) U30Jc (my personal favourite) When I went notebook hunting after my A-levels (or high school, for all you Americans), my biggest concern was size. My life had taken on a mobile quality, and I sought a laptop to correspond. Of course, there were other options out there (think iPad, for example). But, for me, the selling point was the optical drive. Whereas computers abound that offer smallness, few of them provide the benefit of playing and writing DVDs. I don’t know if you’re like me, but that’s a huge deal. My DVD collection is immense, and my music library was stored optically. If I ever wanted to transfer and enjoy my media as I had been, I needed that optical drive. And with a small package like the U30Jc, the decision was easy. But, there were also some alternatives I considered.
2) UL80vt (if I had been more responsible) As an undergrad going into a design-intensive field, I pretty much relied on my school’s computers for graphics-intensive applications. And that’s all well and good, but in hindsight, opting for a less-condensed-but-more-robust PC like the UL80vt would have saved me countless hours inhaling coffee in the studio. It would have been a dream, in other words, to do the work in the comfort of my dorm. And with the right computer, I could have. The UL80vt offers the out-of-this-world graphics capability of the GraphixBoost counterposed with data-crunching intensity of DDR3 memory. It’s a combination that even outperforms most Mac offerings in graphics-heavy applications, and at a fraction of the price. Given, it’s a bit less attractive as a streamlined personal computer. But, if I had been more responsible.
3) U20A (for the bargain hunter) One of the personality traits I can’t claim is having an eye for a bargain. The U20A is quite possibly the best value out there in computers, because the aesthetics that you sacrifice (like the attractive lines of the U30Jc or the suave aluminium of the MacBook) just aren’t worth the premium they cost. The U20A is a economic alternative that may be less consistent with the coffee-shop stereotype of notebook user, but its innards are truly impressive for the price. With storage capacity in the hundreds of gigabytes and graphics ability for running any game imaginable, it’s just a good deal! Plus, with its 12-inch display and slender body, it really isn’t too uncompetitive with sleeker options. In the end, though, I’m not as bargain savvy as I should be. But that isn’t to say you aren’t. And perhaps, if you are, you’ll notice at first glance what I only recognised in hindsight.
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