What would be a good laptop for incoming college student in fall 2010?

dethompson

I want a new laptop, looking at Inspiron 15 (1564). I like Dell and Sony laptops, what would be the best brands for a student, not gaming. Would it have Microsoft Word and other Office programs on it? Should I buy it now or in May or should I wait until I am closer to college in the fall?

Answer
My husband is quite partial to dell brand, so you can also check out those.
Honestly, i believe you get more bang for your buck with hp!
Whatever you do, don't get a gateway or compaq. Thier both really unreliable. I know from experience.

Most computers these days don't come with word installed. There are two programs that are free that i also recommend:

Sun has a free word suite substitute called "Open Office". It reads all the file types, even word documents. It is perfect if you are on a budget.
Also, for a Photoshop substitute, "Gimp" is a free program. I use it all the time.

Do yourself a favor, take time to research computers and look at ratings. You may not need a lot of memory because your laptop won't be used for gaming, but even so i recommend 4gb or higher. Tasks and programs run faster.
Also get an external hard drive. If anything happens to your laptop and you have anything important on there, it could be gone forever...which has happened to me before.

Lastly, good sales seem to happen right as school is ending for everyone. They lower prices because they know people that are going into college will need a laptop.

Best laptop for a college student 2010?

Lou-Lou-Ro

Okay, it doesn't necessarily have to be the best. I was looking at Macs but there quite expensive and we have them at school and I find them really difficult to use, I don't why but I'm just so used to Windows, even though we have been using them for two years now.
I want a laptop around the £500 mark (as I also want to get a camera, that will be in a separate question, but if you know of any good cameras that would be helpful too)
Preferably with Windows 7 as thats what I'm used to.
It also needs to have the Microsoft package, so Excel, Works, Powerpoint etc.
I mainly use my laptop for surfing the internet and doing coursework, but it would also be great if it was good at playing movies, 2 years ago I got a Dell Inspiron and was assured it was the best laptop for playing multimedia - I was thoroughly disappointed.
I don't know a lot about GB etc, but obviously it needs to be quite fast and have an adequate amount of memory.
Finally I don't play many computer games except for Sims 2 and Sims 3, currently I can't play Sims 3 on my laptop as it doesn't run very well so it would be great if it has good graphics for gaming and will run fast etc. but that isn't a necessity.

Well thanks in advance.

Answer
Do not get less than 2 gigs ram. Just make that your absolute spec in all of this. You can easily upgrade hard drive space later, or use a cheap external drive.
HPs are both really good.

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