The Best Laptops for College and University

Choosing the perfect laptop for college or university is not as easy as it may seem - there are so many different options on the market that it is often very hard to find the laptop that will perfectly suit your needs. Probably the biggest difference between laptops is their performance - that's why the most important question that you can ask yourself, is: "What am I going to do on my laptop?" We will try to do our best to help you make the ultimate choice.First of all, size. To make a proper decision, in terms of the size of your laptop - you need to ask yourself: 'Will I need a bigger screen or is a small one OK?', 'Will I be taking this laptop around college/university or is it going to sit most of the time in my room?'. After you have answered those two questions, it's easy to decide - if you answered 'small' and 'I will be taking it around school from class to class' - choose one of the laptops with smaller displays (in our opinion between 9 and 13 inch displays perform the best in the 'small laptops' group). If you don't mind a smaller screen but you won't be taking the laptop with you - we would advise something in the 14-inch range. Obviously, if would like a laptop with a larger display and you won't be taking it with you, you can shoot for one of the largest models - 15.6 or even 17 inches.Next, you need to ask yourself what are you going to use the laptop for. Are you going to do a lot of writing and/or programming on it? Then certainly check if you like the keyboard (both the layout and the "feel" of the keys). Things such as CPU, RAM, Graphic Cards etc. don't really matter here - any computer can start up a Word Processing program or (for example) a C++ compiler. Your typing comfort is by far the most important. If you're into graphic design - you need a significantly more powerful machine. I think it's pretty obvious that you need a good Graphics Card - after all, you're doing graphic design. For gaming you need a fast CPU, around 4GB of RAM or maybe even more (depends on the game) and if you want to enjoy the game/games even more - a powerful graphics card. This makes gaming laptops the most expensive.The last thing you should look at is price - however, we definitely recommend you skip this part - unless you are on a really tight budget. Remember - the laptop that you are going to buy is most likely going to serve you for years and years to come. You are going to work on it quite often - actually, most college and university students spend as much as 4 hours (or more) on their computers - per day! It is very important that you buy the laptop that suites you the most - without thinking "Oh, this one is $70 cheaper, I'll buy it".In the last part of our article, we would like to show you some sample computer specs depending on your needs - you can enter these as 'Filters' while browsing through laptops on websites such as BestBuy, Amazon and eBay.Gaming/Graphic Design Laptop: At least a 4-core 2Ghz+ CPU, 160GB SSD Hard Disk, 4GB of RAM or more, and an external graphics card.Laptop for writing/browsing the web: 2GHz Dual Core CPU, 2GB of RAM (or more). Internal graphics card would work good for you.Portable Laptop: The specs here don't really matter - although we don't suggest going below a 2GHz Single Core CPU and less than 2GB of RAM - your laptop might get really slow and annoying to use, even if you are just going to browse the internet or play Solitaire.We hope that the information contained in this article will help you out in choosing a laptop of your dreams.