My Choices For The 2010 Best College Laptops

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For most students, college is a time to break away from the nest, meet new and different people and of course, see how you function without your parents, even though you’ll probably end up mssing them a lot. But a very known and popular way to cure homesickness, as well as make any work done for your classes a lot easier, is to have a laptop by your side. It’s very hard to go somewhere nowadays without seeing someone on their laptop. Whether it be at a local bookstore, your favorite coffee shop, or even a fast food chain restaurant, it’s nearly impossible to function without a laptop.

However when entering college, you need to research for the best laptop computer for college students. This will save hours of stress, making your college life a lot easier. When searching for the perfect laptop, you will need to look for a few features that are basically mandatory in the college world.

First and foremost, it must be light, small and easy to carry. This will make it easier to walk around campus, whether it be from class to class, or to meet up with friends to work on a research paper. Many models meet these features, models ranging from Sony, HP and Lenovo.

A very popular and good choice, are Vaio laptops, which come from the brand Sony. Not only thin and light, most systems come with DVD and/or Blu-Ray compatibility, ability to burn DVDs and CDs, as well as buy very powerful CPUs, 2GB RAM, and large hard drives, which allows you to store more information.

Another popular and important feature to look for, especially being a college student, is of course budget. For most students it’s easy to become short on money, and finding a good budget laptop will prove to be a good buy. To name just a few great models, Dell, Toshiba and HP. Two great models I would personally recommend would be from Toshiba and Dell.

Most Toshiba laptops are a great budget and you can also buy a dual core CPU, which works well with most applications needed for college and whatever needed for personal time. Dell Studio laptops are one of the best laptops, which is the laptop I personally use. The price may be a little high for some students, but is completely worth it. Not only can you design your own laptop, or buy other designs nearly everywhere online, it is a very light laptop and has a very good battery life. Although not very easy to move around, it is still completely worth every penny. Dell laptops are also good for their screen size, excellent graphics, and has an amazing processor, good memory and also includes an optical drive and webcam.

Another portable, small and light laptop would be the Lenovo ThinkPad. Capable of not only excellent computing performance, it also comes in a very small, sleek, compact package. The ThinkPad is the best Lenovo laptop for college and is a great choice for any student, though a bit pricey, it’s still affordable and worth the cost. On top of that, it has been called one of the best preforming laptops available and around. Most weigh no more than 3 pounds, which makes it very easy to carry around. Though most are targeted for school use only, it comes with an amazing hard drive, processor and CPU.

However there is one laptop that is known as the best college laptop, the Apple MacBook. This laptop has been called the perfect embodiment notebook for not only college students, but students in high school as well. Most customers to buy the MacBook are, ironically, college students and once reading it’s features, it comes to no surprise. With a big inch display, these laptops are as well light and portable. Though a bit expensive, it’s a purchase you wouldn’t regret in the future. With a great processor, amazing graphics, and 160 GB hard drive, it is seen with more college students than any other laptop. Though only 5 laptops are profiled here, there are plenty more out there and available that could work quite well for a college education. Other models not featured here that are also amazing are HP Pavilion, Gateway and Asus.

Also take into consideration what your needs and wants are before purchasing anything. Make sure whatever laptop you buy, can not only make your college work easier, but fits your style and is easy to carry any and everywhere with you.

This post continues our Best College Laptops 2010 series.

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Battle Of The Best College Laptops: Apple Or Dell?

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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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Five College Laptops You Should Consider (and why)

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This is a guest post by Jim Walken, who is well known about here as someone always willing to help out and answer a question. Thanks Jim!

One of the necessities a college student needs to help them in college is a laptop for term papers, researching, keeping in contact with family, etc. Of course, there are student computer labs on a college campus, but it is difficult and inconvenient to not have a laptop with you wherever you go instead of hanging around the computer lab until the hours close. However, when deciding on a laptop, there are certain laptops that are much better than others for college students.

You’ve heard me say it before….the best laptops for college students will be ones that can best fit the student’s needs. Being a college student myself, I have been through my share of laptops and seen what everyone else uses as well, so I have come up with the best laptops that I think are great for college students like myself.

First off, I prefer Mac to PC, so one of my pick for the best college laptop of the five is the Apple MacBook. The MacBook is not extremely cheap, but for under a grand you can get a decent sized laptop with great power and functionality. Mac is a different operating system and a different interface than PC, but it is not very hard to learn how to work on one. I like the MacBook because it is a decent size, it’s still portable and actually quite popular with a lot of college students. It also has a great battery life, and also has attractive features, and you buy it with different memory sizes and different options, but the basic MacBook is just under a grand without tax, not too much for a college student. They can get up to as much as $2,000, depending on the size of the screen and what core components you decide on.

I would also pick the new Apple iPad for college students as well. I actually have one, as do a few students that I know, and it is fully capable of many things that a regular laptop could do, except it does not have a web camera. It is very light, and very versatile, allowing students to buy their eTextbooks on it and read them right at their fingertips. It also works as a sketchpad, where students can purchase a pen for the iPad and draw and take notes. It also has a very long battery life, and even though the keyboard is on the touchscreen itself, it is not that difficult to use. If students have an issue with this, they can purchase an optional wireless keyboard for around $70 and use it with the iPad. I have asked a few people besides myself about the iPads that they own, if they prefer their laptop or their iPad, and many prefer the iPad as it is easier to carry, and less weight in their backpack. The iPad comes with two options, with the Apple 3G wireless network ability and WiFi, or just WiFi, and the option of 3G adds to the cost of the iPad by about $150. The iPad comes in different sizes of memory, from 16GB, 32GB to 64GB. I also really like the touch screen, and the thousands of apps available. You could think of it as a larger iPhone, but more like a PC tablet, without the phone capability. The iPad starts at $499, and goes up to a little over $800, cheaper than the MacBook.

Another personal favorite of mine would be the ASUS Eee pc, a small and portable netbook perfect for web browsing and taking notes. It is rather small, and is primarily used for just web browsing, at netbooks are made for, but at a price of around $400, and a full keyboard, it is still a pretty good deal for a college student. It does able you to run programs like Microsoft Word and programs you would generally need for classes, but only if you want a portable laptop for only taking notes and web browsing. Otherwise, the ASUS Eee netbook probably would not be what you want if you are looking at doing more than strictly class work on it.

Another top pick for college students would be another small one, the Acer Aspire AS1410-2954 laptop. It is a decent screen size of 11.6 inches, and is considered a laptop. It has Windows 7 on it, a relatively newer operating system, but it is not hard at all to get used to. It also comes in a very stylish maroon, instead of a traditional black, white or silver, giving it a little bit of character as well. It costs around $500, which for the portability, the features and the screen size, it is a pretty great deal in my opinion.

The last top pick I would suggest for college students is the HP Pavilion DV6-2162NR. Hewlett Packard has constantly kept its laptops fast, and fair priced, without sacrificing on much as well. It has a large screen of 15.6 inches, and allows to upgrade to a lot of RAM and memory for students who need more for classes like computer science majors, or for watching movies, playing games, or running multiple programs at one time. This laptop is under $1000 at the basic model, and adding more components, memory and features will raise the price, but for everything the laptop has to offer, it is a reasonable deal for students in college.

The best laptop for a college student truly depends on their needs for classes, and their personal preferences. Some students may prefer a Mac operating system to a PC, or they may want something smaller and portable. It also depends on your budget as a college student, and how much you are looking for in a laptop. It depends on how much you will use the laptop as well. Some students have a netbook or tablet and a regular sized laptop, so they can use one at home, and take the smaller one to class instead of a notepad. It all depends on the student and what is the best option for them.

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