I am going to college this fall (leaving in 1 week!) and I will be buying a new laptop for college. What laptop is best? I am particularly looking for one with a lot of memory, good wireless internet and (hopefully) less than $1,000.
The $1,000 price range is flexible but not by much.
Any help/comparisons between laptops you can recommend will be helpful.
It depends. Are you more partial to certain brands? When buying a laptop, remember that it only comes with trial software. Things like anti-spyware and anti-virus software, as well as Microsoft Office will have to be bought separately. Make sure you factor that into your overall budget.
The majority of laptops come with wireless cards already integrated, so that takes care of one part. High memory for a laptop is between 3-4 gbs of DD2 memory. 3 should be sufficient for a college student, unless you tend to use a lot of memory.
The next factor is size. Are you looking for something very portable? If so, you should consider something with a screen about 14.1"-15.4". There are 12" ones, but those are almost too small.
Next, consider whether AMD v. Intel is important to you. Intel processors tend to be more energy efficient, meaning they don’t get quite so hot, while AMD is cheaper.
Not only that, but only 2 brands come with restore disks: Dell and Toshiba. Any other brand you would have to either have the disks made for you, make them yourself, or buy them (Restore disks allow you to put your computer back to factory settings in case you need to reboot/reset). It takes about 3 hours on average to make a set of restore disks, sometimes more.
Using those things will help you narrow down your selection significantly. Your best bet is to look at laptops on BestBuy.com and use the left hand menu to narrow down the selection. You can choose brand, size, memory, hard drive size, processor brand, etc that way. I personally recommend buying an HP, along with services like Optimization/Restore Disk Creation from Geek Squad.
Good Luck =)
