For college students laptops are long-term investments that could potentially cross over to their professional lives. Hence, it’s crucial to take some time to research and ascertain what specifications suit your needs.
Moreover, with the proper knowledge, you can purchase a laptop that will give you great value for money.
Here is a list of things you should consider when choosing your college laptop:
BUDGET
Budget is the most important factor to consider when buying a college laptop. Students are already hampered with student loans, high cost of living and high tuition fees, therefore working with a budget is unquestionably vital. An extremely tight budget will limit you from finding a laptop with all the features you desire.
Moreover, even the best budget laptops for college often cost a fraction of the price of new premium laptops. A moderate budget will give you ample space to find a laptop that meets your necessity.
Both Apple and Microsoft offer discounts on their laptops for college students. It can be helpful to keep an eye for such offers.
WEIGHT AND SIZE
As a student, you are bound to be constantly moving from one lecture hall to another. Having a light compact laptop that could fit in your bag with ease will significantly reduce the toll on your back at the end of the day.
HARDWARE
Hardware typically consists of the CPU, GPU and the RAM. Finding the right balance between this components is essential for you as a students to ensure you get the best experience out of the laptop. Some tasks like machine learning, software compilation and physics calculations are CPU intensive hence having current generation CPU’S will be ideal. Other tasks like video editing and animation are more GPU intensive hence you’ll need a beefed up graphics card for the job. As for the RAM, having more will always be better. It not only improves multitasking but also allows for faster accessing of data.
SCREEN
Considering you’ll have your head buried on you laptop screen most of your time, finding a laptop with a proper screen is a no brainer. There is a variety of panels to choose from, each with different resolution, sizes ,color gamut and brightness. A good screen will find right balance between portability and usability.
It might take some time finding a laptop with the best screen that suits your needs but in the long term it’s definitely worth it. It’s also worth noting that once you purchase a laptop you’re stuck with the screen till you buy a new laptop.
STORAGE
Over the years, there have been great advancements made in the technology used in computer storage devices. There are traditional hard disk drives (HDD) that store data via the use of magnetic storage, solid state drives (SSD) which are semiconductor-based storage devices that use flash memory and hybrid drives which are a blend of traditional HDDs and flash based SSDs.
The major difference between the three is the price and speed. SSD are currently the fastest and most expensive of the three. HDD’s on the other hand are the slowest. Additionally, they are cheaper and quite easy to find. Hybrid drives offer faster speeds than HDDs but at a cheaper price than an SSD.
Whether you buy HDD, SSD or hybrid drives, it’s crucial to ensure to get a laptop with atleast 500 GB of storage space. This will let you download and store more documents and data in you laptop.
BATTERY LIFE
Having a laptop with a long battery life is a definite advantage. It ensures that you can have continued productivity without having to worry that your laptop could die on you. Additionally, you wouldn’t need to carry that bulky laptop charger everywhere you go.
A college laptop with at least 5 hours of battery life will suffice most of the time, but the more, the better.
CONNECTIVITY
Its vital to ensure that your laptop has all the ports required to make your connection to other devices and the internet as easy and effective as it can be. These range from ethernet ports, UBS ports, HDMI, mini display port, SD card ports and an audio jack.
OPERATING SYSTEM
The operating system (OS) is basically a software that manages all other computer programs. There are a variety of operating systems to choose from. There is windows, Linux, macOS, chrome OS and Ubuntu just to name a few. Currently, windows is the most popular OS with over 70% percent of the world computers having it installed.
Some Points To Note When Choosing An Operating System For You Laptop/Computer.
- Check whether the software you are planning to use is available for that OS
- Memory management. Look for an OS that offers the best memory management for your laptop.
- Availability.
- User friendliness. Find an OS that easy to navigate.
- Cost.
- Reliability.
