laptops for students

The best way to start out your search for a laptop computer is to make a list of all the ways you will be using your computer.
Students need a laptop that is small and light enough to carry around campus from class to class but rugged enough to withstand being in a backpack and jostled around with a bunch of books. Most students are on tight budgets and therefore need an affordable laptop that will still give them the features they need to do projects and assignments for class. Students also love to listen to music as they walk around campus, so the ability to download and store their favorite tunes are a must. The features the students need are like the home user, a large Hard Drive of at least 120GB I would recommend at least 200GB or more, the ability to burn CDS and DVDS. Your software needs as a student are based around doing college papers and for that you need the office suites from Microsoft, Microsoft do a Student & Teacher edition that will cost you €79, as the normal cameral price is a lot more than this. It’s also worth mentioning that when you buy your new laptop, 90% of the time it will not come with MS Word or any of the office products – if it does they are probably a 30 day demo from Microsoft. Students will also need their laptops to be both wired and wireless for use in a network equipped classroom environment and your home Wi-Fi network, Getting Wi-Fi on your laptop is pretty much standard in this day and age. Wi-Fi enabled printers such as the HP Officejet 6500, can also be bought relatively cheap.

Decide on a laptop.

Most college students will get by with a PC laptop that includes software standards like a word-processing program for all those essays or a spreadsheet program for advanced math classes.

If you are studying graphic or Web design, however, you might need design software and a Mac, the platform that still tends to be favored by creative fields not to mention that a Mac cannot get a PC virus, another interesting point to make about apple is the “uptime” a lot of people that have a Mac can have it on for days at a time without the need to reboot it and the last really good thing about a Mac is the software that comes with it, when you purchase a new Mac you will get the following programs with:

iPhoto ’09 – Organize photos two new ways: Faces, based on who’s in your photos, and Places, based on where your photos were taken, then share on Facebook or Flicker with a click.

iMovie ’09 – Make a great movie in no time. Choose a dynamic theme to enhance your movie in seconds. Or refine every shot with the Precision Editor.

GarageBand ’09 – Learn to play piano and guitar. Learn songs from the artists which made them famous. Rock like a legend with new guitar amps and stompbox effects.

iWeb ’09 – Design a website to share your photos, movies and music, simply by dragging and dropping. Add new dynamic widgets and publish and share with a click.

However just like the Windows pc you will have to purchase the Microsoft office for Mac separately –when you send a file from a Mac to a PC you will not notice the difference, at all. The apple operating system is very easy to use.

A net book might be suitable if they’re only writing papers and surfing the Web, Net books have a really good battery life the normal battery life for a net book is 5 hours, but when you are thinking about a net book you might want to think about the screen size. Most net books will have a screen size of 8 to 10 inches this is actually quite small, with a screen resolution of 800 X 600 pixels, this means is you want to run graphic design programs like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator they will not run because of the low screen resolution. But the up sides are fantastic you get a very light computer that will run the office package with ease and give you a battery life that should last all day. It’s also important to mention, that most net books will not come with an optical drive (DVD Drive).

Memory. How much do they need? Probably enough to store items often found on college laptops like MP3s or photos of friends. And depending on your course, you may need extra hard drive space for original creations such as large graphic design files, movies or digital music scores. Consider a laptop with 2GB to 4GB of memory depending on how you will use the laptop.

Imagine the memory in your laptop like a big black bag with all your programs running around, the bigger the black bag the more room your programs have to move around, and the less chance they have of “crashing” into each other.
Size: What’s more important: portability or screen size? Most of you will want a lightweight laptop so you can easily lug it along with the books. But some will prefer the larger 15-inch screen that can make the laptop heavier. The average weight of a 15.1 or 15.4 (wide screen) laptop is 2.1KG a net book will weight in just under 1KG with a 10.2” screen.
DVD burner or multimedia features: Do you need these extras? For example, do you need a burner to make DVDs for assignments? Or do you need multimedia must-haves like a graphics card with extra memory or connectors, such as S-Video? Chances are this feature will come in handy for presentations you may have to give. Also the bigger your graphics card the better your game play will be while playing games – also if you are running video editing programs having a better graphics card will help a lot!
Pick a security package. Students are amongst the biggest users of digital music, online gaming and freeware. Such activities involve a lot of downloading from the Internet, opening you up to security threats. Before you ever get online, make sure your brand-new laptop is loaded with antivirus, antispyware, every single new computer that is sold in Ireland today will come with a 30 day trial of some kind of Antivirus, when you are making your purchase it might be worth negotiating with the sales person to get a deal, after all it’s a buyer’s market right now.

There are a lot of Antivirus software to choose from.

• AVG
• Mc Afee
• Symantec
• Kaspersky
• Eset Nod32

Passwords and physical security. To play it safe, protect your laptops by setting a login password you have to type before gaining access to any files. You should also change all your passwords often. Use passwords that don’t include real words or personal information, and that do include numbers and symbols in addition to letters.

Create a backup plan. Thumb drives are handy, but they can’t store a semester’s worth of papers and a serious MP3 collection. If your laptop does happen to be stolen — or experiences an unpredictable hard drive crash — having a backup will make the event less painful. With frequent, automated backups, all your assignments, emails and personal files, like photos, will be stored safely. Norton™ Online Backup is an online service that allows you to automatically back up your data to a secure storage site. This way, if you do lose your laptop, you can use a private login to access their data from any online computer.
Based on what’s on the Market today we would recommend the following three laptops.

1 – The Samsung NC20 NetBook – This is a fantastic little netbook with a battery life of over 4hrs and a screen size of 12.1”. It has no optical drive but with USB sticks being so cheap, you can use them to back up all your important files. This netbook is great for word and browsing the web with a long battery life.

2 – Inspiron 15 – I really can’t fault this laptop, it is a great all round laptop and at €499 you get 4 GB of Memory, 250GB Hard Drive, 15.6” screen – this laptop would be a fantastic laptop for everyday use, it has enough memory to handle anything you throw at it. Top price, Top Sec, nice one Dell.

3 – Toshiba Satellite P300-1FN – This laptop is for the person that wants that little bit more from a laptop. It has one of the best processors that Intel makes for laptops! The memory runs faster, the hard drive spins quicker, data is transported across the mother board at spell binding speeds. The only bad thing about this one is its weight, coming in at 3.35KG, but if you mean business then this is the laptop for you!

More information about the Samsung Nc20 Click here

Information about the Dell Studio 15 Laptop

Information for the Toshiba