Going to college and you find yourself in need of a student laptop?
Student laptops tend to vary a whole lot from cheap ones to really cool
quad core ones (a.k.a. not so cheap ones). Finding the best student
laptops isn't always an easy task. One thing to take into consideration
would be what the laptop will be used for. If it will just be an
accessory used to check mail, watch movies and surf the web, then those
don't go that high on the price range and you could probably get away
with a 400$ model. But, if the student in question will be needing a
laptop to work with, or demands power from the laptop, the price can go
quite high sometimes.
Depending on what area of studies the laptop will be used for, there are a few factors that need your consideration.
A
laptop for someone who attends some form of social studies will mainly
be used for writing papers, creating PowerPoint presentations and
spreadsheets. These are the average laptops which you can find almost
anywhere. They don't require a lot of horsepower to run simple programs
such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or Excel.
If the student
attends classes which require graphics work or design, then a high end
laptop might be needed. If it's graphic design, then a laptop with more
than one CPU core, about 3GB or RAM minimum and a decent dedicated
graphic card will be needed for things to run smooth. If there's
architecture involved or complex 3D rendering, then, again, some
powerful CPU, a minimum of 2GB or RAM and a more than decent graphics
card that's able to display a quality rendering to the very last pixel
will be needed.
Another type of student laptop would be the one
that is used for gaming. These laptops, like the previously mentioned
ones, can go quite a lot up on the price scale, since the newest
generation of games demands quite a lot from the whole computing system.
A nice start is a dual core processor, with 2 GB of RAM and some of the
newer models of the nVidia or ATI dedicated graphics cards. Some of the
newest laptop models even feature two graphics cards in SLI
configuration for ultimate graphics performance!
Before going on and purchasing the student laptop, you really have to ask yourself what it will be used for.
Portability
is another issue to take into account. You don't want a bulky laptop
that's extremely heavy to carry around from class to class. Its size
should also be taken into consideration, since you really don't need a
21 inch screen laptop to get a paper done.
Also, the size of the
laptop should also be determined by the size of the student also. If the
student is of a shorter statute, then a smaller laptop would be
recommended.
Baseball players or jocks could probably fit a whole
21 inch screen laptop in their bags and won't even perceive the thing as
an obstacle.
Since college is a also a huge social experience,
the looks of the laptops should also be considered. If you are going to
study business, or marketing, then you should go with a classic black
model laptop that goes with a suit.
If you are going to study art
or design, then the laptop case could have the whole color palette on it
for all you care. Choose something that goes with the type of person
you are and the type of classes you attend.
The problem most
people find themselves stuck in when choosing a student laptop is the
lack of variety to choose from. Stores don't carry quite a lot of
options when it comes to laptops, so you might have to be a bit more
patient in your searches. For a store to carry more than a small
selection of laptops, it would have to be quite a giant in the IT niche.
This is where the internet comes into play, since you can compare
several laptops from mega-sellers such as Amazon and choose the perfect
student laptop based on your needs.
Before you jump in and purchase a laptop, you should review a few basic features for the best student laptop you should buy:
CPU - Laptop Processor
Laptop
processor can vary quite a lot in speed terms, so you need to carefully
choose when deciding what you should go with. A single core processor
can handle quite a few tasks, such as web browsing; email access, IM
chatting, movie watching and other low processing power applications.
You could easily write your paper on one of these and would be happy
with it.
Hard drive space- Laptop HDD
This
is one difficult choice. There are people who use the basic applications
they get with the laptop and don't require to store anything else on
it. Then again, there are media freaks who tend to store up on
everything, so they require something similar to a central library when
it comes to storage space. You should start with a standard computer
HDD, of 100GB, if you don't intend to store too much on it, and should
go up to 500 GB if you intend to manically save everything you encounter
on a daily basis.
RAM - Laptop System RAM
This,
along with the processor, is the most important aspect you should look
for in a laptop. Think of it this way, the more RAM you have, the faster
the laptop will run, the more applications you can have open at a
single time and the more work can you do in the least possible time. The
less RAM you have...well... you will have to figure out how to tweak
your system for best performance to go with a low RAM specification
laptop.
Optical Drives
Do you intend to use
your laptop as a multimedia player? Most students do, so choose a
laptop that comes with an optical drive - a standard DVD burner should
do just fine for starters. But if you really have a big spending budget,
then choose a laptop with a Blu-Ray burner. This can ensure you could
write up to 50 GB of data to a dual layer Blu-ray disk.
Wireless Connectivity
When
choosing a student laptop, make sure you choose one with wireless
connectivity. This is because you won't know what sort of internet
connection you run across on a college campus, so a wireless connection
assures you will have internet access where there's no wired
connectivity.
No comments:
Post a Comment