Forget buying textbooks, joining clubs and draining the alcohol reserves of the student union. The most important thing you'll spend your money on at university is a laptop. A laptop represents a digital office, a cheap entertainment hub and a lifeline home to the parents, all wrapped up in a few inches of plastic and metal.
Ideally, you want one laptop to last you all three years, so try not to skimp on the basics. Build quality and reliability are essential. Look for solid construction (a metal chassis is best), with a full-size keyboard for easy typing of essays, and a large (at least 14 inches) screen for those long hours in the library. The screen's resolution is less important: a standard 1,366x768-pixel display will do.
The first choice you'll have to make is whether you want a Windows-based laptop or a Mac. Which one you go for will largely depend on how rich your parents are feeling. Macs are built well and age slowly but you'll have to splash out plenty of cash, and the most affordable MacBooks have cramped screens. Windows computers come in a greater variety of shapes, sizes and prices, but you'll need to stay on top of upgrades to squeeze a three-year degree out of them.
Whether you prefer portability over toughness is a personal choice, but don't shy away from a heavier laptop. It will discourage you from taking it to the pub, where many a student computer has met a beer-soaked end. Battery life shouldn't be a primary factor in your buying decision, as most of your work and play is likely to be within reach of a power socket.
When it comes to the processor and memory, don't get carried away. As long as the laptop can run office software, surf the Web and run DVDs, there's little point in splashing out on the latest silicon. Any dual-core chip over 2GHz will be fine, and you might just get away with a 1.66GHz Intel Atom chip in a netbook if you won't be working with media.
A good chunk of RAM (2GB to 4GB) doesn't add much to the price, but a massive hard drive will just tempt you to fill it up -- we reckon it's better to spend less and buy an external drive to safely back up coursework, music, photos and videos. Similarly, high-powered graphics cards were invented by Satan to lure you away from study in favour of time-devouring first-person shooters.
While optical drives are going out of fashion, they're still a great way to watch DVDs and share data cheaply. Look for a built-in rewritable DVD burner and avoid pricey Blu-ray options. All modern laptops come with Wi-Fi connectivity, and Bluetooth can be handy for linking to mobile gadgets. The more high-speed USB ports you have, the better. Finally, your parents and long-distance love interest will thank you if your laptop has a built-in webcam for making Skype video calls. That'll save you money on your mobile, too.
from http://reviews.cnet.co.uk
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