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College students: what are the important laptop features

kranky

kranky

Elite Member
A friend wants me to recommend a laptop for his son who's starting college in the fall. He's not a gamer and not a techie, just the basic liberal arts student.

I'm going to propose a system with a 15.4" screen, CD-RW/DVD reader, 512mb RAM, WiFi, upgraded long-life battery, XP Home, 4-year warranty, MS Office Basic (Word/Excel) and a case. Probably a Dell Inspiron B130 with Pentium M 1.8Ghz and integrated graphics.

The areas I want to get input on are:

Is the 15.4" screen adequate?
Will he miss not having PowerPoint?
Is the 4-year warranty a smart move or a waste? (costs $249 more than 1 year)
What kind of case is best for a college student? Standard or backpack style?
Should I add Accidental Damage warranty coverage for $79?

Thanks in advance.
 
The specs are fine.. if he's going to carry it around, he probably would want nothing bigger than the 15".

I dont know if the lcd has a different or higher resolution.. sometimes the 1280x768 is too large..

I would probably get 2 year warranty.. since after 2 year, you can buy a new one.. battery is only cover for first year.. so if he's connecting it to the ac all the time, i would take the battery out

i would also go with core duo, its so cheap right now.. dell has a 14" core duo out now.. slightly cheaper than the 15"
 
Also for the Office, most post secondary institutions offer Office at an extreamly discounted price. So don't buy it from dell (depending on the price).

Now to your questions:
15.4 is more the adequate, cause if you go more it just increases the weight you have to carry all the time without IMO much benifit.

Yes, he would miss power point as a lot of instrutors are moving to a model where all the class notes are in power point. He could get PP reader, but if he needs to make a presentation for a class and he wants to do it in PP then he's hooped.

I personally and not a huge fan of warantys, this is probally because I upgrade my laptop in less then 4 years.

The style of case depends on what kind of stuff the student has to carry. For example if the student has to carry 2-3 textbooks each day the increased weight on one shoulder can really mess up your back. If they are carrying much more then the laptop in the bag, so backpack.

Accidental Damage, it depends, is this person very careful and protective of the stuff they have currently? If so, can they also afford if nessesary to replace the laptop (worst case senario) If they simply cannot afford to replace the laptop if something crazy were to happen then this might be a good idea.
 
My perspective as a third year grad school student.

Definitely want a good screen and keyboard if he's going to be writing papers on it. I can't see a reason why someone would want to get an external monitor or anything like that.

One gig of RAM might not be such a bad idea if the price was ok--or if you could put in some that you pick up cheap from Fry's, Microcenter, etc.--especially considering if he's going to get a lot of spyware, etc. crap on it.

I would think that he would need Powerpoint. EVERYONE uses powerpoint these days -- sigh. Doesn't the Student/Teacher edition upgrade -- which I think is ~ $129.00 or so -- include Powerpoint? I'd definitely get it.

No real coment on the warranty--I don't have one, but then again, I'm kinda protective of it all. My feeling is that if it breaks three years from now, it's probably going to be cheaper to buy something new then.

Hope that helps.
 
Originally posted by: kranky
A friend wants me to recommend a laptop for his son who's starting college in the fall. He's not a gamer and not a techie, just the basic liberal arts student.

I'm going to propose a system with a 15.4" screen, CD-RW/DVD reader, 512mb RAM, WiFi, upgraded long-life battery, XP Home, 4-year warranty, MS Office Basic (Word/Excel) and a case. Probably a Dell Inspiron B130 with Pentium M 1.8Ghz and integrated graphics.

The areas I want to get input on are:

Is the 15.4" screen adequate?
Will he miss not having PowerPoint?
Is the 4-year warranty a smart move or a waste? (costs $249 more than 1 year)
What kind of case is best for a college student? Standard or backpack style?
Should I add Accidental Damage warranty coverage for $79?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

1. Yes, definitely adequate
2. Depends on the program he is in, but I use PP all the time and would be lost without it.
3. Probably not a bad idea as it will get him through all of undergrad.
4. I used standard, but it is totally personal preference
5. Depends on the person, but I am not overly careful with mine and packed it everywhere and never had an issue. If he is a klutz it may be a good idea I guess.

I also recommend upgrading to 1GB of RAM if it is in the budget, I found it helped a lot when working on my papers and listening to music/doing other stuff at the same time.

Hope that helps.

Cheers, KT

Edit: wow it took me a long time compose my response, three other guys responded while I was doing it 😱
 
If your son is used to a certain resolution, you may want to know that. For instance, I am used to running at least 1920x1200. If I don't have something close to that, I have trouble compiling excel spreadsheets due to not being able to see perturbed systems react graphically as well as in tables.

I got the e1505 because of its:
1. Price
2. Resolution (1680x1050)

Then tagged on a 4 year warantee, 1GB ram (minimum), and 1.86 core duo.

If you work the coupons, you can get a nice system like mine for around 1200$ shipped from dell.

I would get the e1505 w/ core duo for your son if you were looking at dell. Another alternative would be a Latitude which could be lighter depending on which model you pick.
 
My wife is in college and has a 14" WS laptop. It works great for her, and she wouldn't want to lug anything bigger around campus. If the weight isn't a problem, then a 15.4" screen would obviously be better. I would go with the 1680x1050 res. That's what my wife's laptop has, and it's perfect on her screen. I would think that on a 15.4" screen it would look to big and you wouldn't have as much screen real estate as with a higher res. I would also recommend the core duo and 1GB of RAM if you can swing the price. We ordered ours through Office Depot (with $400 in MIR) and it cost about $35 to upgrade to 1 stick of 512MB and another $70 to upgrade to 2 sticks of 512MB. So, we upgrade to the 1 stick and bought another one for $40. It took all of 3 minutes to install it, so it was definitely worth the price savings.

Does the school have a Dell EPP program? Ours does, and you can sometimes find really good deals on there. Even without any coupons, I priced an e1505 Core Duo with the 1680x1050 res screen, 1GB of RAM, and the longer-life battery for $1170.

My wife tried to use a bag that could either go over the shoulder or be used as a backpack. It was awful! The backpack straps didn't feel right, and the shoulder strap dug into her shoulder. She only used it for a couple months before replacing it. I would recommend buying the laptop first, and then taking it to Best Buy or Circuit City and having him try out his laptop in the different bags. We did that with our camcorder, and it worked out great.

I would say that PowerPoint is a must. At some point he's going to have to do a powerpoint presentation, and it would stink to have a nice new laptop but have to work on his presentation in the computer lab. Office 2003 Student Teacher edition comes with Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word, and you can find it here for $130. You might be able to get it at his school for about half that.

It's hard to say if the warranty is worth it or not. We went through Office Depot and got their warranty for $130 for 3 years. It covers everything except the screen, including accidental damage. If anything goes wrong, we just take it to Office Depot, and they'll either fix it there or ship it to Dell and charge us nothing, not even shipping. So, I thought that was worth it.
 
Here is my input as a college student.

If this laptop is just for sitting in his dorm room, then size isnt really an issue, get anything that he likes. But if its for bringing to class, portability and battery life are important. A 12" or 14-15" is what you will want, and probably not widescreen as those tend to be bigger in size. Get something faster than what he probably needs. His computer will get filled with spyware and 512MB of ram will get eaten up fast, go for 1GB as a target. DVD/RW is a must have for storage and sharing various "media" with friends. Wifi is a requirement, as is a hard drive over 60GB. If he doesnt already have a large MP3 collection, he will soon aquire one over the local networks at his school, dont skimp on space.

Alot of people who are not techies I know are looking for more space because their music and thousands of digital photos have filled their drives.

I would emphasize that if he wants to bring this to class, that durability and weight be taken into consideration, get something that isnt a brick, or wont break being thrown around.

As for a bag, 90% of laptop users either have a small padded sleeve that will wrap around the laptop. (think an iPod case but on a large scale) or they use their regular backpacks. In my experience a seperate laptop bag isnt cool, and is too much to carry in addition to books and a regular backpack.

I just throw my laptop in with my books and hope for the best. Last year I had a Dell Inspiron 8600, it served me well, but it was too ***** large, and heavy. (I'm a gamer and anandtech geek so I needed the desktop replacement format, but it was a pain in the ass to lug around) This year I live out of the dorms and have my regular desktop in my room. I take a second hand PIII Latitude laptop to class, and its rugged and the perfect size.

I would be inclined to recommend the new Macbooks that are coming out. Both OSX or Windows and they should be light weight and durable. They should be out by summer from what I have read.

EDIT: As for an office suite, he will eventually need powerpoint. Maybe not his first year, but its something he more than likely will need to have. I grew up making powerpoints as yearly as middle school, so Its something i have always used throughout my education, and I couldnt go without it.

Over this last year I have done 3 or 4 power point presentations for my business minor classes. Gen education classes probably wont utilize powerpoint, but anything "specialized" will require a powerpoint more than likely.




Also while he might only make a few powerpoint presentations a year, if his college is anything like mine, 3/4 of his professors will post their lectures on the web, either before or after class. That means he will need powerpoint, or a powerpoint viewer setup and installed so that he can view the presentations and help study/take notes. Some professors do convert to .pdf, but not all.

I would say bite the bullet and just buy him powerpoint.
 
If he's not a gamer and not a techie, I'd really consider a macbook. I definitely prefer pcs for myself, but the "average" computer user is for all intents and purposes completely incapable of keeping windows free of spyware/bloatware/malware. Obviously it's not rocket science keeping windows clean (turn on automatic updates, use firefox, install autoupdating antivirus and antispyware of your choice, don't click retarded things,) but this simple regiment is beyond 90% of computer users. I've been fixing laptops for kids at school as a sideline business for all four years of college (graduate tuesday!) and when people bring me macs, it's usually because they don't know how to install video codecs to watch some bootleg movie or tv show. When people bring me PCs they are usually in such bad shape that I back up their documents and have to format and fresh install windows. It's just an observation based on my personal experience, but normal people seem to do better with macs than pcs.
 
I know that some people don't like widescreens, and there are advantages to 4:3 screens, but I would still recommend a widescreen. One reason is side-by-side documents. Another is the keyboard size. My wife went from a 15" 4:3 laptop to a 14" WS, and the keyboard is bigger on the 14". Also, she does a lot of research online for her assignments, and it's very handy to be able to see the entire width of an IE page (with her research) and the entire width a Word page (that she's writing her paper on). I personally think that a 14" WS with 1280x800 res is the way to go. My sister-in-law has a 15.4" WS, and I couldn't imagine carrying it all over campus, especially on top of all the books & supplies.

As far as the mac recommendation, I'm not sure about that one. My wife's roommate her freshman year had a mac, and whenever it had problems, no one could help her because they only knew how to fix PCs and not macs. That's just my two cents.
 
Lots of battery life and being light weight are probably the most important properties. Core Duo with 1GB-2GB of memory would be my ideal laptop.
 
I agree iwth kalrith on the widescreen to allow for a better keyboard layout.

The most overlooked laptop spec is HDD rotation speed. Even with 1GB of RAM and a fast CPU, a 4200 rpm drive will slow things down (i've been down this road). At least a 5400 rpm drive is in order, but I wouldn't screw around and go for the 7200 rpm drive.

If this laptop is expected to be used for 4 or more years, is a MS Vista upgrade possible in ~2 years? If so, this makes the selection of graphics hardware more important, even if he doesn't game.

The warranty is hard to say. I took good care of my laptop in the dorm, including blowing dust out of it fairly often. Still, after 3 years, enough dust got inside that in slowed down the CPU fan, and it made the CPU run at it's slowest speed, and made the keyboard hot! B/C I had a warranty, a guy came out, took it apart, replaced the motherboard (I don't know why, he didn't know either, "they just send me the parts") and cleaned out the fan. Good as new. Was it worth the cost of 3 years of warranty? Debatable.
 
Originally posted by: kranky
A friend wants me to recommend a laptop for his son who's starting college in the fall. He's not a gamer and not a techie, just the basic liberal arts student.

I'm going to propose a system with a 15.4" screen, CD-RW/DVD reader, 512mb RAM, WiFi, upgraded long-life battery, XP Home, 4-year warranty, MS Office Basic (Word/Excel) and a case. Probably a Dell Inspiron B130 with Pentium M 1.8Ghz and integrated graphics.

The areas I want to get input on are:

Is the 15.4" screen adequate?
Will he miss not having PowerPoint?
Is the 4-year warranty a smart move or a waste? (costs $249 more than 1 year)
What kind of case is best for a college student? Standard or backpack style?
Should I add Accidental Damage warranty coverage for $79?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...


1) Screen seems nice

2) Will be ok without Powerpoint, but will NEED to have microsoft word. Could also borrow a copy from a friend and install it, lots of college students do that.

3) 4-year warranty seems like a waste for me. I would just take the 1 year and save the $249 towards his/her next laptop.

4) Just get a standard case, you can buy one on ebay for like $10, many people never even transport their laptop. You might imagine him brining it to the library etc..., but most likely it will just sit in their dorm room, and they might use it on their bed.

5) YES get the accidental damage warranty. College students are horrible about damaging their laptops. A friend of mine had coke spilled all over their laptop. Even if your son is careful, they may have an idiot for a roommate.

Additionally) If your son is responsible it could be worth investing in one of the laptop antitheft devices. I've never had one, but you jack it into your PC somehow and it prevents it from being stolen easily. Only works if your son is willing to attach it and remove it when he wants to move around his laptop.
 
OK, I was waiting for someone to mention this...forget about Microsoft Office! Yes, you can get it cheaper with a student discount, but save some money and just install OpenOffice! It is a free download (open source). It can open and save as Word files (.doc) and I believe it can also do the same with Excel & PowerPoint files.

To all the people telling you that you need 1gb because of spyware. Thats just silly! After you buy this laptop for him, make sure that you have anti-virus and anti-spyware utilities installed! Give him a little tutorial. Now with that said, 1gb will make it more "future-proof". But 512mb is still respectable.

I personally just bought a 2 year warranty. It just makes the most sense. CompUSA has a two year warranty and you get a free one-time battery replacement. So after about 1 1/2 years you just go in and get a new battery (they lose their ability to charge fully after repeated use).

Backpack, definitely.
 
Originally posted by: DISK
OK, I was waiting for someone to mention this...forget about Microsoft Office! Yes, you can get it cheaper with a student discount, but save some money and just install OpenOffice! It is a free download (open source). It can open and save as Word files (.doc) and I believe it can also do the same with Excel & PowerPoint files.
Click to expand...

The money saved is not worth the aggravation it can cause. OO is an excellent alternative to MS Office in a standalone environment (just for personal use at home) or when you have a portion of users already using it (office). But do you really want to worry about why a font changed when you are trying to using the schools computer with PP to give a presentation or why something won't import/export properly when working collaboratively with other students using Word or Excel? Or in a stats/accounting/science class the professor shows you how to do it a certain way in Excel, then you have to spend 30min trying to duplicate it with Opencalc?
 
A Dell E1505 fits your needs. Use the Dell Coupon Discounts found by Googling.
Get Windows XP Pro as your O/S.
1GB RAM
128MB Video card at least.
Your harddrive should be 7200RPM with 8MB cache (you can video edit on this without dropped frames)
This is the minimum for a college student's laptop. I don't think you're get any objections from those who want to help you and others.
Its your choice......
 
I personally like the 14" size, but that's up to the user. If he doesn't mind carrying something bigger, then it's fine. As for your particular questions:

* Is the 15.4" screen adequate?

Yes. I'd personally say smaller, but his choice.

* Will he miss not having PowerPoint?

No, unless he has to give presentations. Most professors will post notes in PDF, not Powerpoint, and OpenOffice.org will open Powerpoint documents fine anyway, if you really need to see one.

* Is the 4-year warranty a smart move or a waste? (costs $249 more than 1 year)

Waste. If you buy a quality laptop and he takes care of it, it will last 4 years.

* What kind of case is best for a college student? Standard or backpack style?

I'd recommend getting a standard style plus a sleeve. Then, he can use a standard style bag, or stick it into a sleeve and into his backpack.

* Should I add Accidental Damage warranty coverage for $79?

No.

In general, I'd say one of the more important specs is going to be hard drive space. Since he's not a gamer, he won't need a fast CPU or lots of RAM. But he will hook up to his school's DC++ hub and download a lot of stuff.

Regarding software, I feel OpenOffice is sufficient for 99% of the student population (versus MS Office). The only component of MS Office I feel is necessary is Excel, which is the only reason I even have it installed on my laptop. It can interoperate with MS formats just fine, so receiving documents and sending them shouldn't be a problem, so long as he remembers to save in doc or pdf. Even for presentations, though I stated above that having Powerpoint would be beneficial, can be done in a word editor and saved as a PDF for presenting. Admittedly, you won't have fancy transitions, but it'll do to save a couple hundred bucks.
 
Portability.... 14".. 14"... 14" I can't emphasize enough.

My 600m is perfect. Any heavier and it's too big. Any lighter, well I wouldn't mind, but that woudl be nice too. Any smaller and your hands will hurt to use the keyboard. I don't get how people use 700m's. Are you guys like little kids or what. I'm not even that tall or big of a person and it HURTS to use a 700m.

3 yr warranty is good enough....

Trust me, warranty is useful. My laptop HD broke 3 times already, and I RMAed it each time (well once was cuz I slammed my laptop close so hard that it killed the heads).
 
Widescreen aspect ratios are less useful for composing documents, like you must do in school. Don't listen to anyone telling you that you can run documents side-by-side on a 14" widescreen-- you can't, because the text is too small. Imagine a Word document scaled down to less than 6" wide! At least if you're going to do that, invest in a good eyecare plan... :disgust:

These are the most important aspects for a college laptop, in no particular order:

A comfortable keyboard
Battery life
Build quality/durability
Small size
Useful screen (this means 4:3 aspect ratio, with decent brightness and contrast)
A big-enough hard drive (will be different depending on the situation, but 60GB is plenty for doing schoolwork for years)
Enough RAM for decent performance (512MB is plenty)

These are next in importance:
Extra RAM
Processor
Hard drive speed

Graphics performance is unimportant in a college laptop, with the sole exception of someone doing CAD or video work.


In answer to some of your other questions:
The B130 could be a good deal. If you choose a 15.4" widescreen, you're pretty much ruling out the likelihood of the kid taking the laptop to class or even around campus much, but that might be acceptable. I think it's nice to have warranty coverage for the entire four years, so I'd also be tempted to spend extra there. I'd add the accidental damage coverage, too. A backpack case is better, because it's less likely to be stolen, more comfortable, and more likely to be able to carry books as well.

With respect to PowerPoint, and Office itself, I would check out OpenOffice.org . The software works very well. It includes a PowerPoint clone that can read and write PowerPoint files, and even save presentations as flash media. No matter what, I imagine that having some sort of presentation software will be useful, maybe even necessary.
 
I really want to thank all of you for your thoughtful comments. It is a very big help to understand why certain features are good (or not so good). Much appreciated!
 
"Don't listen to anyone telling you that you can run documents side-by-side on a 14" widescreen-- you can't, because the text is too small."

Don't listen to anyone telling you that you CAN'T run documents side-by-side on a 14" widescreen. I'm typing from one right now at 1280x800 resolution and can see the text just fine (*disclaimer* it might require 20-20 vision to do so). The jump in size and weight from 14" to 15.4" is huge when you lug it all over campus (especially when you add three hard-cover books to your bag). So, the size should be determined by how portable it needs to be. If it's only going to be carried once a week, then 15.4" will do fine. If it's going to be carried daily, then I would go with 14". I will say that any less than 14" is very difficult to see. Even a 13.3" screen is quite noticeably smaller than 14".
 
Again, do NOT buy MS office from Dell. I can buy MS Office Pro (Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint, etc) thru my University's computer store for about $75. This is not the pretty academic retail box they have on their shelf -- they have a site licensed version available for all students to buy as a stand-alone CD you pick up from the computer services desk.

Also, most universities have some kind of academic packages avaible thru vendors like Dell and Apple. You really need to check with the university to see if you can get a better deal. I think the Apple deal is a fixed $100 of their normal price. For me, I can get a Dell discount, but I can get a better deal if I watch for a big coupon code online.

Just do a google university search (www.google.com/universitydomain) for computer store or computer department & see what they have.
 
I would get a smaller laptop with a 14" screen and plenty of battery life. Carrying a bulky laptop around is not fun, especially if you need to take it out in a crowded lecture hall.

For the cases, I would get one of those slip covers with a zipper so he can put it in his backpack or carrier bag along with his other stuff.

It might seem easy and fun to lug around a desktop replacement at first, but simplicity and ease of use win in the long run.
 
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