Buying a PC or Laptop

Buying a PC or Laptop is still a major purchase for most students and as such it is important that adequate consideration be given to the type, specification, and price of the computer. For students generally and  psychology students in particular, most will choose a laptop over a PC for ease of transport and portability, although recently ‘notebooks’ have been gaining in popularity in this sector. Price is probably the most important factor in this market and the reducing cost and increasing power of the current models is a boon to students. It is not that long ago that a suitable laptop could have cost the student 2000e+, whereas today a quite adequate machine can be bought for 600e approximately.

Important factors to consider:

·    Processor

For best performance, Intel currently rules things with its Core 2 Duo processors. If you want a bargain, you can by a laptop with an older Intel chip or an AMD chip. The CPU choice may not really matter all that much unless you will be using your laptop for multimedia or gaming and if you are go for Intel’s Core 2 Duo.

·    Battery

Make sure you go for a Lithium Ion battery with maximum cells. A ‘use life’ of 2 hours would be reasonable if you want to make use of its portability, but most libraries that students use will have power points.

·    Memory

Memory is important, and currently 2 GB would be a reasonable size a laptop.

·    Hard Drive

A hard drive of 250 GB would be adequate for student purposes.

·    Screen

A 15.6’’ HD LED LCD screen is fine for a laptop.

·    DVD

Most laptops have some sort of DVD or CD-RW drive built into the laptop itself. Because of space constraints, some smaller laptops offer an accessory slot where you can swap the DVD drive with a spare battery or other accessory.

·    Communications

Most laptops have at least two USB 2.0 ports; many offer four. A majority of notebooks include a four-pin FireWire (IEEE 1394) port for connecting an external drive or a digital-video camcorder. Built-in Ethernet now comes standard on all portables. Many laptops also have built-in Bluetooth. Some laptops come with built-in wireless broadband wide-area networking.

·    Other things to consider are Graphic card, sound card and speakers, inbuilt camera.