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If you’re a student in college, you’ve probably become familiar with the term “starving student.” and possibly in a literal fashion. The fact that the cost of a college education has outpaced inflation for the last couple of decades and shows no sign of slowing doesn’t seem to mean very much to the vendors of groceries, school books and other items that you need for your years of schooling. Prices for food on campus are just as expensive, if not more so than what you pay off campus. Sometimes it may seem that no one cares about your financial struggles or difficulty in handling tuition, books and lab fees.
Now, in the digital age, whereas students have advantages their parents never had, such as the power of Google in research for papers, college students also have an additional expense that their parents never had to deal with – the virtual necessity of having a computer in order to do well in many courses. Of course there’s the option of going to the local library whenever you need to type up a paper, or visiting the computer lab if you have to do online research, but for most students, the high demand for computer-generated material simply means that you need to buy your own computer…no easy feat on a college budget.
Computers don’t have to be very expensive, however. The price of computer components such as processors and memory chips has fallen so drastically since they became commonplace in the late eighties, as to make a basic needs computer an inexpensive proposition. Most computer manufactures now make not only desktop computers but also laptops as well starting for less than $500. The most popular brand for laptop computers on a budget are the Compaq, the HP and the Dell. Toshiba has also entered the laptop market in recent years but does not seem to be able to gain much ground in market share. Sony’s laptop series costs slightly more (starting at $599), but they do offer a wider range of multimedia features that may be absent in the lower-end models made by other manufacturers. For a desktop computer, many students turn to building their own systems or having a friend with the know-how do it for free. The cost is about the same as buying one off the shelf, however the power you will receive in your processing and memory and storage capabilities will outstrip a store-bought system.
College students on a budget are well-advised to focus on a laptop system rather than a desktop since both are running about equal in price and performance. The laptop’s portability is a huge advantage for a college student, allowing you to take notes in class and access the Internet when needed anywhere on most college campuses. When buying your laptop you will want to pay most attention to two features of it for the best performance – the memory (RAM) and how large the hard drive is for storing your files, videos, music pictures, etc. RAM plays an important part in how fast you computer can do functions such as open a browser and surf the Internet.
Talk with your friends when deciding which of the major brands you will purchase. All of them have horror stories and great success stories – no one manufacturer of computers has advanced so far above all others to be the “BMW” of computer quality.
