Computer for School?
I'm looking for a laptop that is designed for the student in mind. I am an undergrad heavily into researching online and writing (tons and tons of papers). I work on Microsoft (mostly word, powerpoint, etc.). I want something that is easily portable, will benefit me as I will be going into grad school soon, but also has nice entertainment features, such as gaming or movie watching. Thanks!
There are ALWAYS two things you need to know before you go shopping for a laptop:
1) how big a screen do you want;
2) how much money do you want to spend.
Once you know those 2 things, look at all laptops with your screen size and within $50 either side of your price range. I personally recommend that if you spend at least $600-700 on a laptop you'll almost ALWAYS be happy with it. So if you've decided on $650, look at all laptops in the $600-700 range and DON'T look at anything outside of it - it'll only muddy the waters.
Then, when you've found all of them meeting that criteria, you can whittle it down to: brands you don't like, brands you like MOST, fastest CPUs, etc.
DON'T forget either: RAM is VERY cheap and VERY easy to upgrade. I wouldn't let RAM come into the decision making process.
Hard drives are also upgradeable; though if you're not a tech it get expensive to swap it out. You COULD create a set of recovery disks, install the new hard drive and then use the disks to recover the system on the new drive.
It's important to remember: whatever screen you buy, you're stuck with. While you can plug in any external monitor, you can't later decide you want a bigger screen and put it on your laptop.
Also, the CPU is NOT generally cost effective to upgrade. Besides costing hundreds of dollars to purchase, they're typically labor intensive to replace and therefore expensive if you can't do it yourself.
It's also important to note: while I own a VERY high end Asus laptop, their lower end laptops (the ones especially thin and sleek) have soldered in, non-upgradable RAM and soldered in CPUs. Also, to replace the hard drive requires disassembling the entire computer, so I wouldn't consider them upgradable AT ALL.
Unless you have a LOT of money, replacing your laptop every 2 years is not an option; you're typically going ot have to use it for many years, so spend as much as you can NOW so you're not stuck with a lousy laptop in a few years.
9 years, 6 months ago
by
GunnerDon
Alabama Gulf Coast