Laptops

A laptop; those who don’t own one already are most likely going to buy one sooner or later. They are incredibly convenient in an era where life becomes more and more digital by the day.

When it comes to going to university or college, you might want to narrow in on a few mostly technical properties.

The operating system

In general I would recommend going for the old classic Microsoft Windows. Everyone knows how to work it, all software is compatible and the price is reasonable.

For those who are into graphic design and art might want to consider going for Apple’s OSX. Although the price of an Apple laptop is considerably higher, there is a lot of software related to graphics and design available for OSX, and it’s one of its main purposes.

Lastly, there’s Linux. Although Linux is free and the possibilities are basically unlimited, you have to do 90% of the work yourself, and the final product is never really as good and usable as you’d like it to be; kind of like Ikea furniture. Anyways, if you’d need Linux you’d most likely know it.

Battery

Commonly overlooked, but one of the most important aspects of your laptop once you’re in university or go to college. It’s extremely frustrating when you have still work to do, but no more battery and no power source. Spend some money here, you’ll thank yourself later.

Hard disk and RAM

This is where you might want to a little money as well. A big hard disk drive is convenient at any time, and RAM memory increases the overall speed of your laptop. Personally I advise going for more than 320GB hard disk drive, and for RAM you’re good at 4GB.

The CPU

The two big players here are Intel and AMD. The discussion whether one or the other is better will go on forever, but recently the Intel i-series are very common. Here’s a brief overview:

i3: Uses very little energy, and still manages to deliver some reasonable computing power. It does what it needs to do, but not a lot more.

i5: Reasonably low on energy, especially for the good computing power. Very good overall choice if you still want to watch some high quality movies or play a simple video game every once in a while.

i7: Extremely strong CPU but uses a lot of energy. Since your laptop preferably needs to make it through the day without recharging, this might not be a good choice. Practical if you are a hardcore gamer, but again: if you’d need one you’d probably know it.

Graphic cards

Again, there are two big players: Intel’s nVidia and AMD’s Radeon. Both do a good job, and unless you’re a hardcore gamer it doesn’t really matter. Today’s standards are good enough for HD video and even most games.

Netbooks

These are actually very interesting. They’re not only very cheap, but also small, lightweight and usually have very long battery life due to the very small CPU. If all you need to do is working with text documents, spreadsheets and internet pages, you might want to at least consider buying a netbook instead.