Best College Laptops

Best Laptop Buys For College

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There are many things a college student such as yourself worries about these days. Money, relationships, parents, and homework all can cause massive headaches. One thing that I believe a you shouldn’t have to stress about is finding the best value laptops for your budget.

When you buy a laptop for college, I would look at three things: price, size/weight, and RAM/Processor speed. Higher RAM lets you run more programs at once. A faster processor makes your laptop run faster.

If you are someone who is very mobile and doesn’t play video games or use Photoshop, a netbook is best for you. They usually cost about $200-500, include 1 gigabyte of RAM, and have an 10 inch screen. They usually weigh about 2 pounds, have about 5 hours of battery life, and have a smaller keyboard than normal laptops, which can be uncomfortable for long periods of typing. I would recommend testing a netbook in a store before buying it to make sure its keyboard and screen size are right for you. A netbook is best for people who only run a few programs at once and spend most of their time on the Internet and typing up homework and is one of the best laptop buys for someone who doesn’t have a lot of money to spend.

If you need some more power or a bigger screen but don’t want to lug around a giant laptop everywhere, I would recommend a laptop with a 13 inch screen. Their prices vary widely, but an average one will cost you from $200-700. They usually include 2-4 gigabytes of RAM and are about 4 pounds. Their battery usually lasts 4-5 hours. They have enough power to play most games and run many programs at once, but are also portable enough to bring with you wherever you go. These are among the top college laptops available on the market.

If you are a hardcore gamer or use video editing or graphics editing programs, you’ll need a laptop with more power. I recommend a laptop with a 15 inch or 17 inch screen. They cost from $400-1500 and include 4 gigabytes of RAM. They usually weigh around 6 pounds and offer about 3 hours of battery life. I would not recommend these laptops unless you need the computing power that they give you.

Buying a laptop may sound daunting, but it is easy if you know what you are doing. Before you buy one, do some research on the Internet. Read customer and expert reviews, go to the product’s website, and see what other people say about a laptop. Ask your friends what laptops they have. With enough information, you’ll do fine buying a laptop.

More tips for saving money on a laptop:
• Buy programs like Microsoft Office from your college’s store. They offer deep discounts!
• I know this sounds counterintuitive, but get the service contract/extended warranty. Computers get viruses, overheat, and get dropped.
• Go to sourceforge.org or search the Internet for open source software. It’s free and can be just as good as paid programs!

Choosing The Right Laptop For College

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I used to work in a college IT department on all different makes and models, different operating systems and Macs so I know first hand that certain manufacturers are better in quality than others.

For students in an art type of major, Architecture, Interior Design, Fashion, I would hands down recommend a Mac due to the graphics quality. But there are equally good Windows-based laptops for school that are very popular. After reading this you should have a better idea of what to look for when shopping for a laptop and your personal preferences for things such as screen size and color.

The three best brands I’ve worked on are Gateway, Dell and Apple. You’ll want to go with an Intel Core duo processor or better for speed and a minimum of 2GB of memory. If you plan on using your laptop for games or using multiple applications at the same time (toggling between open applications) get 4GB.

Hard drive size is dependent on what you plan on storing. If you are just going to be storing documents for school any of the standard hard drives the manufacturers are offering now will work. For music and picture storage you’ll want to increase the size depending on your usage. For those who store a tons of music and large pictures, keep in mind that it takes up a lot of space and will ultimately slow down your computer. So you may want to invest in an external hard drive. But for the average person, as I mentioned before, all the hard drives offered in the new laptops have a lot of space, about 250GB or more and will work just fine.

It is important to get a laptop with Wi-Fi capability as it is probably needed in certain classes and every college now offers Wi-Fi on campus and in dorms.

Also keep in mind battery life – some last just 3 hours and others last 6.5 hours or more. Video and sound are dependent on what you plan on doing with the laptop. This is particularly important to gamers but for your average student, the standard video and sound feature offered by the manufacturer will work. Personal options to decide is whether you want a webcam, if you are looking for a laptop with Windows or a Mac Operating System, the screen size and weight. There’s some laptops you can customize the color but there’s also different styles of skins for purchase as another option and perhaps less expensive. All these latter options are based on personal preference.

I would suggest going with a Gateway, Dell or Apple Macbook. However, the best laptop computer for college students is the Dell Inspiron 15R or higher. This laptop has excellent standard features with Intel Core i3 370M processor (better than Intel Core Duo), 4GB memory, 500GB hard drive, built in wireless and webcam, CD/DVD burner and 1 year warranty just to name a few options! You can also check; Best College Laptops 2010 for more suggestions.

Whichever laptop you decide to go with, all three that I mentioned above have a much better quality than others on the market, and this is based on my direct experience fixing a variety of student computers on a college campus.