College Money

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Whenever I buy a new gadget I do tons and tons of research to make sure that I’m getting not only the essentials that I need but more bang for my buck.  Since this will be mainly for doing projects, reports and things like that for school I had to figure out what is the best laptop for a college student? With so many different choices and styles nowadays trying to narrow it down to just one was almost mind boggling.  Here are a few of the ones that made the final cut before I tell you which one I actually bought.

First, before I even get into that.  A sure way to save you time and gas is to do some online comparisons first from some of the stores that you would have physically traveled to.  Instead of trekking all across town to say Best Buy, then to Fry’s, then to Walmart, or Target and all these other retailers just pull up their websites and do a general search there.  Now everything on the site may not be in the store and some of the store items may not be listed on the websites but it will give you a genral idea of their inventory.  You can use some of that gas money you saved to buy yourself a USB memory stick or something.

Okay so after looking at and comparing what seemed like thousands of laptops in all different sizes, colors and styles I narrowed it down to these top 5; Acer Aspire 15.6″ Notebook, Toshiba Satellite 15.6″ notebook , Apple macbook, Dell Inpiron Mini Netbook, and the final contestant is the HP Pavilion 13″ Laptop.

To help you break it down a bit more, I did a sort of Final Four ( in this case five) round robin tournament to help decide the best laptop for a college student.

Acer Aspire (A)    Vs    Toshiba Satellite (B)

Amount of Hard Drive Space: 250GB (A & B)

Operating System: Windows 7 (A & B)

System Ram: 3GB (A) 2GB (B)

Price: $449.99 (A) $499.99 (B)

Battery Life: Up to 2.5 Hrs (A) Up To 3 hrs (B)

Screen Size: 15.6″ (A & B)

Other Features: USB Ports: 2 (A) 3 (B), Built in card reader: 5 in 1 (A) 6 in 1 (B), Bluetooth wireless enabled (B)

After this round the winner would be the Acer Aspire (A).  This laptop is $50 less and you get 1 GB more of processing speed with 3GB of ram instead of 2GB, and it is a little lighter.  The battery life is 30 minutes less but that can be overcome with a few tweaks to the usage.

Dell Ispiron Mini (C)   Vs  HP Pavilion 13″ Laptop (D)

Amount of Hard Drive Space: 160GB (C) 320GB(D)

Operating System: Windows 7 ( C& D)

System Ram: 1Gb (C) 3GB (D)

Price: $349.99 (C) $549.99 (D)

Battery Life: 8hrs 45 Min (C) 6 Hrs (D)

Screen Size: 10.1″ (C) 13.3″ (D)

Other Features: USB Ports – 3 (C) 4 (D), Card Reader (C & D), Webcam – (C & D)

After this round the winner is the HP Pavilion (D). I know, I know it’s not fair to put a laptop up against a netbook when you want to figure out the best laptop for a college student but netbooks are on the rise and some of them are pretty comparable with the smaller laptops. That’s why I put it up against the smallest laptop in the bunch.  The netbook is a whole lot lighter on the wallet then the others but I don’t think it’s something that should be used as a sole device.  It should accompany a desktop or bigger laptop to take on trips or to class instead of lugging around the bigger device.  while yes, they are making them better and better all the time right now it may not be the best laptop for a college student all by itself.  The larger hard drive and bigger screen made the HP Pavilion the better choice in this battle.

Acer (A) Vs HP (D)

Amount of Hard Drive Space: 250GB (A) 320GB (D)

Operating System: Windows 7 (A & D)

System Ram: 3GB (A & D)

Price: $449.99 (A) $549.99 (D)

Battery Life: 2.5hrs (A) 6hrs(D)

Screen Size: 15.6″ (A) 13.3″ (D)

Other Features: Card Reader (A & D), Webcam (D)

In this one the HP moved on to the next round.  Even though it is $100 more than the Acer it has 70GB more Hard drive space, 3.5hrs more of battery life and a webcam.  I know I love to make video blogs for Youtube and Skype for free with my family and friends back home so that would come in handy.  The screen is smaller but it is a lighter weight and more portable than the 15.6″ Acer.

HP Pavilion (D) VS Apple Macbook (E)

Amount of Hard Drive Space: 320GB (D) 250GB (E)

Operating System: Windows 7 (D) Snow Leopard (E)

System Ram: 3GB (D) 2GB (E)

Price: $549.99 (D) $999 (E)

Battery Life: 6hrs(D) 7hrs (E)

Screen Size: 13.3″ (D & E)

Other Features: Webcam (D & E), USB Ports – 4 (D) 2(E), Multi touch trackpad (E)

This one was tough. It seems like all I see around campus are Macs so that’s why I researched them.  The HP Has a bigger hard drive, more ram, and is $450 less than the macbook.  They both have the same sized High Definition screens at 13.3″ and webcams for chats and vlogging.  The only thing that Apple has the HP beat on is the multi touch trackpad and 1 hour more of battery life but there are all sorts of tricks to gain more life out of your battery between charges.

I liked each one of these devices for different reasons so it was so hard for me to settle on just one winner.  So my opinion? In the end the price won out and I chose the HP Pavilion 13.3″ laptop.  It just seemed like more bang for my buck and as a poor college student I want to make sure I always get my money’s worth out of everything.  When it comes down to it,  a lot all depends on that individual student.  I think that a small, portable yet powerful laptop is the option for me but some may want something with a bigger screen that is more durable so that it can take those bumps and bruises, I know I put my laptop through all kinds of crap!

Those were just some basic comparisons to help when deciding what is the best laptop for a college student.

What is The Best Laptop For A College Student?2.051