In the world today, going to school without a computer (preferably a laptop), could be likened to going to the farm without farming tools. This is because irrespective of the cause that you are studying, you would be giving a lot of assignments that would require you to use your computer for research, put together the assignment and submit the assignment. While getting a desktop computer is an option, getting a laptop has more benefits. The fact that you can easily move it implying you can take it to the class, libraries, home, and to any other place you might need it or want to take it to, is vital. There is also the fact that laptops come with batteries that can save power that you can use for hours as opposed to desktops that you might have to support with a UPS and still be very limited in how much time you can use it without light. If you want to buy a laptop to use in college, here are some factors that you might want to consider.

What you want to use the laptop for

The first thing you would want to consider when you want to buy a laptop for college is what you want to use the computer for. This is important because computers come with different configurations and specifications. Different things you will want to use the laptop for will determine what specs you should go for. For instance, if you are in the Social Sciences and you are strictly going to use the laptop for schoolwork, you must not get a laptop with a lot of space and RAM compared to if you intend to play heavy games with the laptop during your free time or if you are a movie lover. If you love watching movies, you will want to collect movies regularly from your friends and this would take up a lot of space on your computer. The same applies to if you want to download all the videos of your lectures to your computer as there are schools that upload videos of tutorials that the students can download from their portal. Hence, while a 200 GB hard disk should be comfortable for installing basic software you need to surf the internet, type, and do your assignment, you will need at least 500 GB hard disk space to copy movies into.

For game lovers and depending on the type of game they love to play, they might require a computer with dedicated RAM for graphics and a high-resolution screen. What you want to use the laptop for apart from determining the specifications of the computer you need to get will also determine the types of software that you will install in the computer. Some types of software also have their minimum specifications that you will have to consider when buying your laptop.

Your budget

The next thing you will need to consider is your budget. If money was not a problem, everybody will buy a laptop with the highest possible specifications. However, since only a few people will be able to afford such a laptop or have a sponsor that will be willing to buy them such a quality laptop for just college purposes, most other people will have a budget they want to stick with. Sticking with a budget implies that we need to consider the best type of laptop the budget can afford while considering what we want to use the laptop for. Fortunately, there are always stores and brands that will sell a particular laptop with certain configurations cheaper than other stores and brands with the same configuration. Hence, you should read Computer Stores Reviews such as those of Until Gone to know how other people who needed a computer for college were able to manage to get the right computer within their budget. You will get information on different brands and models as well as how you can get the computer of your choice.

Battery life

Another factor you might want to consider when you want to get a laptop is the battery life of the laptop. You might want to take the laptop for classes and there might not be enough sockets readily available for everybody that might have brought their laptop or other gadgets they need to plug to light. You might also hope to visit the park and other places where sockets might not be readily available regularly with your laptop. Hence, you would want a laptop that should be able to power itself for at least 4 hours. With this, you will worry less about moving around with your laptop charger whenever you need to use your laptop outside your hostel or home. You would be sure that your laptop would be able to serve you for a significant period without the need to connect it directly to light.

Screen size

You would also need to consider the size of the screen of the laptop. If you are going to be using the laptop strictly for surfing the Internet, typing and you are on a very tight budget, then you could go for a mini laptop. They have very small screens and are significantly cheaper. Their smaller screens and lesser processing power contribute significantly to making their batteries to last longer.

Computer accessories

You should also consider getting the right computer accessories for your laptop. You will need a comfortable laptop bag that you can use to move your laptop around. You will also need a flash drive and/or external hard drive to regularly back up your documents. Fortunately, there is the option of backing up to the cloud or your email instead of bothering about flash drives. This is especially if you do not have heavy documents, especially video tutorials and movies you want to back up. Another computer accessory you might want to get is an external mouse (wired or wireless). Not everybody is comfortable with using the mouse pad that comes with a laptop.