How to choose a laptop for college is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make. You’ll be spending a lot of money on new equipment. For that reason, it’s important to find the laptop that works best for your budget and needs. Unfortunately, many students have no idea how to pick out a laptop for college. It’s usually a problem when first starting out, since you don’t know what you really need.
To figure out how to choose a laptop, you must first understand how most of them actually work. Most laptops come with a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse. Everything else is built into the laptop itself. The real-world laptop is different though. Inside the real-world laptop is a small computer called the microprocessor.
SPECIFICATIONS
The microprocessor is what runs all the software and hardware on your laptop. For that reason, the laptop usually has a slow, artificial speed. It doesn’t matter how fast the RAM inside your laptop is, if the speed of the microprocessor is slow, then the laptop won’t be very useful to you. The first thing you’ll want to do before you buy a laptop for college is figure out how much RAM you’ll need. Usually, a laptop with an average amount of RAM will be able to boot up in less than five minutes. That means that having a laptop with at least four GB of RAM will make a big difference.
Next, you need to decide whether you’d like a laptop with a keyboard or a touch pad. I personally prefer the touchpad. Touchpads let me tap on keyboard the screen rather than touch the keyboard all the time. However, many people say that laptops with keyboards are more comfortable to use. That may be true. I used a Toshiba satellite series with a and it was much more comfortable than the Yoga Pro.
SIZE
Next, you should decide whether you want a laptop with a full sized hard drive (which most students need) or a slim, sleeker design with a compact form factor. For many students, a larger hard drive is a necessity. That being said, many slim laptops with a smaller form factor are available. For example, the Lenovo ThinkPad Twist is only 3 inches thick; compare that to the comparably sized Apple MacBook Air!
BATTERY LIFE
The next item on your list should be a good, solid laptop battery. Since you’ll be using your laptop in a variety of settings, you want something that will provide long hours of battery life. The most popular choice these days is a lithium-ion battery. The laptops of today have Lithium Ion batteries rather than the old NiCad batteries that lasted for several hours before needing recharging. You can find them in many configurations, so spend some time shopping around until you find one that meets your needs.
Many people say that the most important thing in their search for a laptop is its size. However, the size of your laptop is only one aspect of good battery life. The weight and size of your laptop are important considerations, but they shouldn’t be the only criteria for choosing your laptop. You need to make sure it has a good price, a solid screen, and long battery life.
PRICE
Overall, if you do your homework and compare laptops based on features, weight, price, battery life, and screen size, you will be able to choose the laptop that is right for you. Note that most of these laptops cost thousands of dollars, and you will want to make sure that you will not be stuck with a laptop in college. It is easy to get caught up in all the excitement – once your new laptop arrives, you won’t want to use any other laptop for long. Do your research and you might just end up with the best college laptop.
