A laptop is the most important tool for a university student in this day and age. It is his primary tool for completing all of his work; papers, presentations, contacting professors, and a multitude of other tasks. Because of this, purchasing a college laptop is a big decision. A student needs a laptop that fits his needs and lifestyle. This guide will help you make a decision on a laptop by bringing up some useful criteria.

The biggest trade off a student has to make when purchasing a laptop is size vs power. A powerful laptop made to run high definition video and powerful computation programs is going to require more space and be more expensive than a smaller laptop meant only for word processing and music. If the student is in the hard sciences or art then a large and powerful laptop may be necessary. Otherwise, a smaller laptop will save money and be more convenient.

A good middle ground is a 15” laptop such as the Hewlett Packard dv6t series of laptops. It’s powerful while still being small enough to carry around. The smallest and recently popular option for students is a netbook. These are very small laptops with about a 10” screen diameter that are mainly used for word processing. Their size makes them very easy to carry to class, and they can go significantly longer without needing to recharge the battery. The parts inside of the laptop are also very important. They determine how fast the laptop will perform, how much information it can store, and overall how easy the laptop is to use.

In this day a hard drive should be at least 250 gigabytes, though the larger the better. Also, most laptops now have at least 2 gigabytes of Random Access Memory (RAM). The RAM determines how much the laptop can store in its ‘short term memory’, allowing students to have many websites open at once or to play high quality video files. The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is another important part of the laptop, and determines how fast the laptop will run programs and do computations. Most CPUs these days have at least two cores, allowing two computations or more to be done at the same time.

Finally, be sure to look up reviews of any laptop before you buy it. Make sure that there are no common problems with that model, and that the reviewer agrees that it is a good laptop for you needs. Remember, there is no one best laptop for college students. To get the best laptop you need to look at how the laptop will be used. Does it need to run powerful programs? Will is mainly be used for taking notes? Will it be carried around a lot? These questions will determine what kind of laptop is best for you.