By Peter Wilson
The question isn’t whether college students need a laptop, but which one they should buy. It’s a pricey decision, however, and one that should be made based on individual needs with the aim of keeping the cost down and the quality up. Here are some hints that can help.
• First of all, don’t go cheap by buying old technology at the end of its lifecycle or haggling for cousin Ted’s old laptop. You want a device that’s going to last a full four years and not leave you in the digital dust in second year.
A prime consideration then (although this, strangely, is often the last thing on a buyer’s mind, according to a recent survey) is a solid, up-to-date dual-core CPU like those from Intel, which is expected to add new Centrino 2 CPUs to its lineup in July with the complete lineup expected in August. There are varying speeds (and prices) of dual-core chips, so you don’t have to go for the most expensive, but don’t settle for less than 2 GHz.
• Nobody but cranky oldsters cares much about the Windows or Mac debate any more in this day of the iPod, iPhone halo effect. Go with what operating system seems right to you, fills your needs and fits your budget. Mac laptops use Intel dual-core chips, so no worries on that score.
• There is nothing worse than a befuddled, memory-challenged laptop that chokes up when confronted with anything more taxing than simple word processing. That means two gigabytes of RAM minimum, although its unlikely you’ll find decent laptops with less these days, unless you’re looking truly down market. RAM is relatively cheap, so don’t skimp.
• If you feel an urge to go with a 17-inch screen, resist it. Take it from someone who owns a big machine and is very sorry. Not only is it more expensive to go large (which also means heavy), but these machines are tiring to tote.
Better to buy 15.5 inches or less (14 inches is good, but you should take a look at the screen of any 13-incher to make sure you can live with it). One thing to note, you do pay a premium for ultra-thin, take-on-the-plane models. Basically, get the lightest laptop you can afford without giving up something you’ll need, like money for food.
• Solid WiFi capability, especially with the networked campus being so common these days, is essential and another reason for getting a good CPU that can deal easily with this.
• You may think you’re going to want to store all your MP3s, videos and photos on your laptop hard drive so you’ll need something big. Well, wrong, especially since you already have an iPod.
The best advice is to keep your internal hard drive down to say 120 to 160 gigabytes (okay, maybe a little more.) You can then spend the money you save on an external 500 gig plug-in USB drive (at as little as $150) to hold your crushing load of music and pictures. A truly portable 500 gig drive will, of course, be more expensive, since convenience always comes at a cost.
• One of the best (and cheap) buys you can make for your laptop is a separate plug-in keyboard and mouse to use at home or in the dorm room. Anyone who has toiled for hours typing on a laptop’s keyboard (and using one of those wretched touchpads) will tell you (just ask me) that this is the way to shoulder pain, backache, headache and other miseries.
• Battery life is, well, a loosely-defined concept, to put it kindly Are you going to really get six hours on a charge? Four hours? Two? The answer is, it depends on a lot of things, the primary one being, what are you doing with your laptop? Editing video is going to exhaust your battery quickly. Simple word processing not so much. When you’re away from an electrical source, stay with the essentials, like typing notes from lectures. Also, ditch that wireless connection when you don’t need it (and that means cutting back on the blog reading or writing until you get back to home base.)
• A good source of laptop reviews is Consumer Reports, which reported on them as recently as its April, 2008 issue. If your family doesn’t subscribe, look up a copy at the local library. CR is online (at www.consumerreports.org), but you have to pay $26 a year or $5.95 a month.
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