Best College Laptops

Five Of The Best College Laptops For 2010

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Finding the best college laptop while preparing for the new, exciting experience of undergraduate education is, nowadays, a very important task for any student. More and more, mobile computing has become a staple, if not a requirement, of higher education. Selecting a laptop that will meet the student’s needs for portability, ease of use, power, and features is imperative. This article will showcase five of the best college laptops currently available.

Best value laptops: At rank five on our list is the Dell Inspiron 17R. The Inspiron 17R gives quite a bang-for-your-buck at only $499 for the base model. It comes stock with a powerful Intel Core processor, which can be upgraded to a Pentium Dual Core for additional horsepower. A pre-loaded copy of Windows 7 Home Basic or Premium allows for usefulness for years to come. The screen is 17″, but don’t be misled- it is only 17″ wide, not the traditional 17″ diagonal measurement seen in most laptops. It therefore has a squatter, wider profile when open. It is recommended thus to try this out in a store or display area before choosing it. Still, a strong choice.

Next is the HP G62x, an inexpensive standard laptop from Hewlett-Packard, an industry standard name. Only slightly more expensive than the Dell Inspiron 17R, this model boasts a 16:9 widescreen display, which is more standard and expected. HP is currently running a nice sale providing a few free upgrades with your purchase of a G62x, including nearly doubling the on-board RAM free of charge, making this a powerful deal.

The HP Pavillion dv6 is a very powerful media laptop, packed with an AMD Quad-core processor for intensive computer work. The added power gives this machine the ability to run many programs at once. It also has the option of including a DVD-burner/Blu-ray-reader with LightScribe technology, which can be very useful to a college student with many files to backup. The dv6 is more expensive, at $749, but the extra performance justifies the cost in this case.

The Apple MacBook – the quintessential college laptop – weighs in at number two on our list. Apple has a reputation for providing powerful computers which function flawlessly, often with more stability than traditional PC-based computers. However, Apple is also notorious for their high-priced products, which is precisely what knocks the MacBook out of contention for first on our list. At over one thousand clams, it may be out of the budget for many college-goers. There are discounts available for college students through the Apple Store, but this reviewer felt that $40 off of a $1,200 computer was lackluster at best. When choosing a Mac, however, keep in mind that the majority of computer infrastructures at most colleges are PC-based, so incompatibilities may become a problem later.

Top college laptops: Our grand champion college laptop is the HP dv7. The next model up from the above-discussed dv6, the dv7 is an even more powerful machine for a marginally higher price. The key feature of this laptop is its longevity. It is designed primarily as a “desktop replacement” – that is, it has all the power of a desktop on a mobile platform. While this is never entirely true, this machine does have the chops to perform well for years to come. Its powerful 64-bit processor, 6GB of RAM, 750GB hard disk drive, integrated ATi Radeon graphics, and more are perhaps overpowered for today’s applications. This means that as software becomes more computer-intensive over the next decade, the HP dv7 will still be slugging it out with the best of them. Added HP features such as ProtectSmart, Lojack, and TrueVision-webcam are more than enough to make this a unanimous choice for the best college laptop of December 2010.

In closing, the selection of a laptop for college purposes is an important task. Affirming a wise choice now will allow for years of use without the need of replacement or augmentation. This list is a good place to begin, but the true decision of what laptop to select lies with the student and his or her individual requirements, desires, and financial ability.

This post continues our Best College Laptops 2010 series.