I also never used a laptop while an undergrad (well I used one for a bit when my desktop was down, but it never left my room). So if you have a desktop, I would suggest a 13"-15" laptop for the mobility.

I'm in a business program, and yes 70% or so of the people have laptops open in class. Even more have them in their bags. Noone is doing anything remotely related to class. Then again, it's not that difficult. Laptops are good for studying in the library, but other than that not worth it. I would recommend a Macbook Pro or Thinkpad, as these tend to not fuck up as much since apple fixed the MBPs.

Yes, a business program almost requires you to have a laptop so that you don't get bored in class while being lectured on the simplest and most obvious of concepts.

The key to a student laptop is simple. Portable, internet connectivity, light, and a good warrenty.

i would agree with most people here and prefer the oldschool method of pen and paper.

i too am doing engineering (materials combined with biomedical)

really, if you already have a pc at home to do typed assignments, the only thing a laptops is useful for is probably gaming and emails

Same here. I've never seen any programs that are needed that aren't already on a school lab PC. Besides, if you use your own you would have to use trialware accounts for AutoCAD and whatnot as opposed to fully-functional accounts on the lab accounts.

I got a 17" HP Pavillion a few years back and I've taken it to class a grand total of once, mostly to show off my crazy orange paintjob to a friend.

Skipping past pen and paper makes finishing assignments quick and easy.

It's something that's worth a try.

I totally ditched my desktop a year ago and I use my laptop as one. I have very rarely taken it to class. But what they said before is true. Portability, reliability and durability, plus good connectivity are the most important factors. Also a decent battery life.

If you are a big computer junkie, I would strongly suggest getting a subnotebook, a personal preference is the Dell Inspiron 700m. It works just as well as a normal sized, and the screen is remarkably bright, high resolution and good enough sized for anything you may run on it. Or, if you are like me and hate to even carry anything bigger than fits in a pocket, buy a pocket pc phone enabled, and there you have a phone, as well as a pocket pc which you can either use in itself, or, sometimes what I do is use a classroom's wifi and the help of a client/host program called logmein, and I access my laptop which is sitting in my dorm, on my pocket pc, I can control it completely and basically I have the laptop screen in mini size on my phone.

please don't go.

No one ever brings their laptop to class, so don't think you'll be using it to take notes.

I recommend a powerful gaming desktop in your dorm room and a light cheap laptop to carry around with you. Something that easily fits into your backpack.

The eee PC looks fab. I'm going to get one for next year.

The biggest one you can find. Duh. Freshers will be impressed and probably think you are either rich or have a big dick.


On a side note, I hate the douches that bring laptops to class. Like who the fuck do you think you are and why the fuck do you need that? Pen and paper is fine. I mean sure, for a class when you need it then you obviously have to have one. Otherwise you are basically painting a big sign on your forehead reading VIRGIN WANKFEST.

A thing I found was handy was taking my laptop to lectures, using the laptop to record them, and getting a good nap whilst there.

And spell check.

I can't believe you don't know how to properly spell college, but you are an engineering student (don't worry, I was one too ;)) so it makes sense. Anyway, I opted for a Dell 1520, it's portable, but you get plenty of screen space, plus I managed to grab a Geforce 8600M graphics card, and a side bonus I grabbed the laptop under one of Dell's sales promotions so I ended up paying a little less than 1500 for it after taxes.

HOWEVER, a laptop is pretty useless in science related courses, because of all the fractions and diagrams, so unless you want to get a tablet PC, then you won't be using a laptop in class.

I bought a Compaq Presario C731TU. With cashback, it ended up being a sub $500. I had to upgrade my RAM, but that cost me only $30, self-installed. Vista runs fine on it, since my WLAN device won't work with XP (drivers, etc). I'm an IT Student, and it works great for what I do. I also can run some decent games on it, and I'm even using it to post from right now. I've never had any problems with it, except for the memory, and support for legacy systems.

you don't want to get a large laptop.

> it takes up a good chunk of the desk your working on.
> nothing but a bitch to carry around (dont forget all the textbooks you'll also carry)
> physics ppl don't need resource-hogging software.

im also an engineering student all i use is office and Mathematica.

the Asus EEEpc is an ideal/size but a wait a few more months for competitors to come into the market.

EDIT: dont get a mac, if your desktop is running windows, get a windows laptop. some ppl here will argue to the death with me, but if your a physics major you shouldn't have a problem with using windows.

I've had an iMac G5 since '04. I used it for everything in college. I bought a compaq laptop on sale my senior year just to have something portable. I don't really use it all that much. I never took it to class. There's really not many classes that require you to have a laptop with you in class. Personally, I'd just see how the desktop works out, and then buy a laptop if it seems necessary. Might as well save your money if you can.

Judging by your poor spelling and grammar, I highly doubt you will ever make it to college. You've got much more important things to worry about than the size of your laptop.

I can't believe it took this long for someone to say this. Although, who knows, maybe English isn't OP's first language...

well go back to primary school first ;),

because you still don't know how to spell.


but,

i think 15"?


but yeah, i have a feeling he's not a native speaker, because he uses alot of formal of grammar style, whereas native speakers (or people who speak english fluently incorporate some slang into it)

Well, then he should go back to wherever the hell he came from. Stop filling up our schools with your inferior, affirmative action taking demon seed!

Yea I went to college for engineering and saw lots of people bringing their laptops to lectures so they could poke around on the internet, chat with their friends and play games.

I didn't read most of this thread, but for my freshman year of college last year I had a 15 inch Acer laptop. It had fairly low specs, 2ghz dual core intel processor, 1g ram, pretty crappy integrated mobile graphics chip. It came pre-installed with vista, but I put both Windows XP and Ubuntu on it. Aside form taking notes, I think the most important thing it did for me was keep me awake during long lectures. Browsing the web kept me from drifting off like most other people and I was able to at least listen in on the more important bits of a lecture.

Even though the specs were low I was still able to get a few of the classic games running like Diablo 2 and CS in between classes, and this was a lifesaver for me because I had a few classes with several hours in between, but because they were in the same building and I didn't feel like driving back and forth due to gas prices, I was more or less stuck with nothing to do.

Also a bit of advice: make a habit of saving all of your essays on a web-based email service like gmail/hotmail/yahoo. Especially if you're switching between computers. There have been at least 2 instances where I thought I had saved my essay or an assignment on on of my flash drives or laptop and it wasn't there. Having it on my email account allowed me to just dl it and not worry about having to drive back and be late to a class.

All in all I think a laptop is essential to going to college, regardless of if you have a desktop in your dorm. They don't have to be super powerful, but its always nice to have something to keep you from going insane at the worst possible moments.

Lol I always took my laptop to lectures so I could actually make some use of the waste of time and make some fuckin bread playing poker. Occasionally I would open up some digusting stileproject porn or shit just to fuck around with the people sitting behind me.

I took mine a few days... like during the days i had tests and shit where i would have extended breaks between classes. I would go chill somewhere and cruise the internet. A few times they came in handy in class because we were typing something and I couldn't stand the shitty Dell desktops they had that would lag about 3 words behind what I would type.

EDIT: my laptop was an Acer with a 15.1" screen that was maybe $350 when I bought it. It had a pretty decent setup, but it ended up burning up the processor. Now I am using a newer Acer laptop (they are cheap and last about 2 years before they self-destruct when I use them) with a 17" screen and the bitch is heavy and i don't like carrying it. Get a 14 or 15 inch screen. maybe a 12 if you are just using it for carrying it around for when you may need it.

I have no idea what your school is like, but on campus I am never more than 5 minutes walk away from a computer I could use.

I would recommend against a laptop just because on a public computer you have no time-wasting stuff pre-installed so you're more productive.

Last year (I'm an engineering major) I regretted not owning a laptop maybe once a month.

If I was in business or other arts program, then I would get one, but other than that, no.

Also, if your school has web-based storage, use it. Internet based storage owns physical storage for school stuff.

I started using the computers at my school during my senior year. I was surprised how many there are when you are actually looking for one.

Oh, and I second the part about using web-based storage. I always send copies of my essays to my gmail account. That way there's no worries about harddrive failure or a flash drive getting lost/broken/stolen, etc.

How did you get into college..but you can't spell college.

Guiz guess wat?!?! I got into collage!!! ^_^

Shut the fuck up, it's been played out already.

I have no idea what your school is like, but on campus I am never more than 5 minutes walk away from a computer I could use.

I would recommend against a laptop just because on a public computer you have no time-wasting stuff pre-installed so you're more productive.



Same at my school, heck I even had 3 classes where school computers were in front of me the whole time. However, I have to say that your recommendation isn't that great. My reasoning is, is that at least with your own personal laptop, you can do whatever the hell you want with it. Most schools will frown upon you putting your owns software onto their computers, and you can't really save any personal settings that you become accustomed to on your own computer.
Also another reason to have a laptop, is that you might not always have access to the campus computers. I know that during my finals, nearly every computer was being used by students doing last minute studying. The in-classroom computers mostly couldn't be used because the rooms were being used for finals or last minute lectures so the library was packed. I know this situation will differ based on campus and other junk, but its really not worth risking missing out on a last second fact checking just because you couldn't get to a computer.

One final reason against your recommendation, is that sometimes you don't want to be at your campus to use the internet. I liked going to some of the restaurants that had free wifi and chill out there while doing research. I know its not for everybody, but at least with a laptop you have that option.

screen size = battery life.

get one with a small screen, since (im assuming for gaming) you have a big one on your desktop. more importantly, look at the screen resolution. i have a 15" macbook pro, but its the same resolution as my 19" for my desktop

Last year what I did was buy a PocketPC and left a high end desktop in my room. My PPC (the xv6700) has a full keyboard, wifi, internet explorer, MS word, MS powerpoint, voice recording, and so on.

Everyone around me asked for turns to use my phone so they could check their email and read the news and stuff. They couldn't use their laptops because their batteries were all dead! I get a 3 day battery life with my phone.

Downside is the phone only has wireless B and my school recently said "fuck all people still using B"

So my options are get the data plan from Verizon or get an EEE. I decided to get the EEE. But I'm going to wait until they get a battery life of atleast 7hrs