If your student is in college, having a computer is usually at the top of the list of student equipment. Today, almost every student has a laptop of some kind. Laptops are ideal for students for several reasons:
- Easier transportation from home to your bedroom
- Easy to take two lectures and take notes instead of writing them in a notebook
- Easy to take to study groups with your friends where you can consolidate notes in one place
- Easy to take to the library or wherever you go to study or review for exams
One of the biggest advantages of today’s laptops is price. Most students don’t have the budget to buy a full-blown high-end laptop. They simply need a machine that allows them to take notes, connect to the Internet to check email or research, run some applications, and so on.
The best low-priced, portable and functional laptops that students might look like are the Asus EEE range of PCs. You can usually buy a good model for under $ 400. This model will come with Linux or Windows XP installed. This range of laptops will meet the needs of most students. Some students may be taking courses that require the use of more processor intensive and graphics intensive applications. For example, it is very likely that someone studying 3-D art would be required to learn a program like Maya, or a student learning to program may require a faster processor so that their programs compile more quickly. In that case, you may want to increase your budget on the 80 laptop with a dedicated 3-D graphics card and a processor that is dual-core and quad-core.