What to look for in a laptop

When students enter third level education they may already own or have constant access to a laptop, there are others however who do not own a laptop. This blog post is my own personal researched information on what would be a suitable laptop for the Applied Psychology course.

At first a student must consider price, they must have a personal budget which they cannot or will not exceed. 

After setting this budget they must then compose a list of features they would wish to have incorporated in their new laptop.

RAM.

Random access memory, it would be advisable to try and get RAM as large as possible, for example  4GB of RAM in  a laptop allows it to work efficiently and smoothly with many programmes running as there is more free space available for data. The efficiency of your laptop is vital in this course as we use programmes such as Photoshop for our Multimedia Design module, Photoshop can be a demanding process for your laptop to run, therefore it is better for you to have more RAM available at your disposal.

Hard disk.

With plenty of assignments, essays and reports to write up it is beneficial to have a large enough hard disk to hold all your important documents and lecture notes. Anything upward of 250GB would be sufficient to store all your important files. Be warned though that PSD files take up more space than normal files or photos! 

Screen Size.

Larger screens are handier for editing on and in general for writing as it means less scrolling when you're proof reading your work. But larger screens also equate to a larger bulkier laptop, the optimum size for convenience and for ease of work. Also it would prove to be useful if the screen brightness controls were easily accessible, for instance as a keyboard shortcut as when you are working in different lighting situations a brighter or dimmer could ease subsequent strain on your eyes.

Keyboard layout.
This is rarely considered in the purchase of a laptop but you need to choose a laptop with a keyboard that you will be comfortable with for typing. Depending on the manufacturer the spacing of keys, placement of keys and additional buttons varies, if you are used to typing on a normal keyboard it may take a considerable amount of time to adjust to the keyboard and the numerous mistakes that could incur could add unwarranted frustration.

Battery Life.
Battery life is an important factor, there is no point as a student having a laptop that will only last an hour running off the battery. Laptops are extremely useful to have to bring into college if you wish to work in the library during your spare time, as sometimes it can be difficult to acquire a computer in the library. you may be required to run your laptop off battery in such situations so it is vital to have a good battery! Also if you happen to have a long commute at the weekends to and from college some bus companies offer free wifi on their buses so it means it'll give you more time to go over lecture slides and notes that you can only get on your laptop!

OS.
If buying a laptop brand new you should be able to expect the latest operating system to be running on it, for the moment Windows offer Windows 7 although Windows 8 is on the way but to my knowledge this is more optimized towards touch screen computers. If the laptop you are interested in is second hand try to get your hands on Windows 7, it's snap features which allow you to have two programmes open simultaneously side by side is an extremely handy feature for a subject like Research and Statistics when you need to have your formula sheet and questions open at the same time.


Processors.
The latest processors on the market from Intel are the iCore processors. There are three of them, the i3,i5 and i7. The i5 and i7 obviously trump the i3 and I would advise you to get either of those over the i3, from personal reading up on them performance has proven to be a little disappointing from the i3.


Video/Graphics Card.
A decent graphics card may come in handy for work like editing, but if it exceeds your budget it's not a vital component, unless you're a hardcore gamer!

Included software.
It would be advisable to check if your laptop will come with any programmes like windows office or a good antivirus pre-installed. It it hasn't ask if there are any deals for such things half price when bought with a laptop. If they aren't included or offered at a discounted price and simply out of your price range there are good alternatives. For an antivirus I would reccomend Avast antivirus (http://www.avast.com/en-eu/index) which is free and excellent! For an alternative to windows office OpenOffice is a great substitute and yet again free, also it should in most cases be able to open files and documents from windows office and vice versa! (http://www.openoffice.org/)




I hope this advice is helpful in picking out your new laptop!