The best thing about back to school season isn't the cafeteria food or pledge week, it's having mom and dad buy you a new laptop. Whether you've got a blank check from your parents or on a tight budget there is a perfect laptop out there for your academic adventures.First decide what activities you are going to use the laptop for. Now if I'm running around campus all day, I want something small and light as possible. If you're just looking to use he laptop for class work and web browsing, then a light weight laptop is the way to go. However, if you need your laptop to do more, something more bigger and powerful will be needed.
Here is a list of tips:
1) The build quality of a laptop is more important than you might think. Not only are poorly built laptops more likely to break down, but their more likely to have overheating problems and therefore run slower. If your laptop is going to be leaving the house several times a week, build quality is more important than it is if your not going to leave the house very often. Look closely at the laptops in stores, read reviews online, and ask friends or neighbors how their laptop worked for them.
2) Similar to build quality, Look at the quality of the keyboard, this is especially important if you will be doing a lot of typing. A poorly constructed keyboard will become frustrating to type on.
3) Mobility versus screen size, if the laptop is rarely going to leave the house then your going to be better off with a laptop with a 15 to 17 inch screen. However, if you're going to be taking the laptop to school or a cafe on a regular basis you probably want something more mobile in the 12 to 14 inch range. Although you should look at the actual weight of the laptop not just the screen size.
4) Specifications, I recommend everyone stay away from single core processors these days. You might think you don't need more than a single core if you're only doing basic tasks like surfing the web, but you might be surprised how draining seemingly simple tasks can be when you have several programs open at the same time. Furthermore budget laptops are only slightly more expensive than the single core laptops that are less expensive. A dual core laptop should be able to handle average computing needs.
