Making your choice of laptops for college can be both fun and challenging. There are so many choices out there! I wish to help you navigate the choices for the best laptops for college students and one of the ways to do that is to consider laptops in 5 different categories of mobile working device. Once you look at these five different categories, you will be able to better determine which fits your needs, and that will also help inform your budget.
The first category of laptop is the desktop replacement. These laptops are generally 17-18” screen sized laptops. They aren’t really “laptops” in the traditional sense (you probably wouldn’t want to sit very long with them in your lap) – but they do fold up and are portable compared to a desktop. These systems come in very impressive specs, and are a good choice if you are used to having the power of a desktop, but want some mobility – a trait that can be very useful in college when you are moving a lot. These laptops can do everything
a desktop can (except upgrade easily) to a certain point.
The next category is your mobile desktop replacement. These are going to be around the 15-17” laptops that carry quite a bit of power, but which are lighter and more mobile. The traditional laptop tends to fit into this category. You can design these laptops for either a goal of production type work, or more casual homework and games. This is the category of laptop that most people tend to go with and is where your standard Macbook Pro fits in.
The third category is a Mobile Laptop. These are becoming extremely popular. The Mobile laptop is a thinner and lighter version of the mobile desktop replacement. These computers are still quite powerful – depending on how you spec them – but are very light and easy to travel with. A Macbook Air is the prime example of a Mobile Laptop. Other phrases used are Ultrathin, and Ultralight. The idea being that they are much more portable than a traditional laptop without sacrificing size.
Now we start to drift away from usefulness. The next smaller category is reserved for Netbooks. The whole Netbook vs Laptop debate is actually quite straightforward. These are quite simply really small laptops. They can be as small as 8” diameter screen size, can fit in a tiny backpack, are very light. Unfortunately they are also not very powerful. These are really only good for surfing the web, email, and writing papers/taking notes. Their production capability doesn’t go much beyond that as they are not capable of holding the power of a regular laptop. However, if all you need to do is write papers and you want something smaller (and potentially cheaper) than a laptop, then a netbook may be your option. You might also consider an iPad for that particular situation.
Beyond this we have Tablet computers – which I wasn’t going to include, but they are becoming so prevalent that I felt a mention was needed. In general, Tablets are best for consumption activities. Reading, watching, and playing. One can do some production activities on a Tablet (such as writing), but a Tablet is not really a substitute for a computer – in terms of production a tablet should be looked at as a very mobile supplement. So if you already had a desktop and didn’t necessarily need full mobile computing capability (but wanted something for notes and papers), then a Tablet may be something to look at. They do serve quite well as a stand alone consumption device, and will surely soon replace textbooks in the near future. As a side note, the only tablet I would recommend is an iPad.
So that is a quick look at different ways of categorizing laptops for college. Each category has its own merits, and each individual is going to need a laptop for completely different reasons. Ultimately, knowing the main important usage of the laptop will help you figure out which category it can fit into, and then you can proceed from there.
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