A Laptop Buying Guide For Students

Laptops are the perfect educational tool for students.  They can handle an innumerable amount of tasks and serve many different functions that allow students to consolidate all of their class assignments and home studies into one convenient location, which simplifies workflow and increases productivity.

The two most important things to look for in a student laptop are portability and battery life.  This laptop will likely be carried in a backpack or shoulder bag from class to class, so you will definitely want a system that is light and easy to transport.  There is also no guarantee that you will have access to an auxiliary power supply in your classroom or on campus, so you will most likely want a battery that lasts up to several hours per charge.

Desktop real estate can be limited in your class, so you want to make sure your laptop is compact and economical in size, preferably around 14" X 10" in general dimensions.

As far as individual specifications, you can get by with most base configurations.  A 1.66GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, and a standard DVD/CDRW drive should suffice, but you may wish to upgrade certain components depending on whether or not you intend to use your notebook for any extra curricular activities, such as gaming or multimedia production.

Unless you intend to do higher-level networking, or unless your school requires domain-based authentication to access the school network (check with your IT department), Windows XP Home Edition should more than meet your needs for an Operating System.

Laptop computers have become the single most resourceful device a student can use for school.  From providing instant access to a cornucopia of information for researching purposes to being able to process, edit and store a lifetime of documents and papers, laptops enable students to keep up with the intense demands and deadlines of academic life by providing them with the tools they need to better organize and execute their daily tasks and assignments whether at home, in class, or on the go.