Laptops

mancmum

Without doubt a netbook is a brilliant buy for a student. The larger machines are prone to damage when being lugged about. I've got the cheap one from Aldi with no complaints and bought my son the much more sold Samsung NC10 which has a 5-6 hour battery life. Unless you've got a power socket at every lecture seat you will need a long battery life.

Get an external disk drive - good deal on samsungs from Maplin and you are away. Better still get your uni IT dept to work on providing a static external CD/DBD drive that people can just plug into when they need to upload software. You can always plug the netbook into a monitor when you want a big screen to watch i-player.

I can pick my netbook up with a thumb and one finger. Just try lugging around a few textbooks a laptop and see how it feels.

Do get a 10 inch screen.

But most of all learn to touch type. Say goodbye to one fingered type. Make notes in lectures and still be able to look at what the lecturer is doing and pointing at.

But most of all, whatever you get BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP. Each year I have students coming to me who have lost their work. Lots of universities will not make allowances for student who do not behave professionally with their use of IT.

I can see you are making careful use of money. There's actually sound sense in sending them off to university without a lot of baggage. Finding out the lay of the land and getting a bit street wise before they start walking around loaded with very stealable kit.

merdoom

TDQO wrote: »

Wait for PC world to do their "back to school" sale... you'll find massive reductions in laptop prices then....

when does this usually happen please (i have no school age children!)
on the look out for a half decent laptop that can run lord of the rings online while the baby sleeps!
cheers!

dieselhead

A lot of universities recommend that students hold off getting a laptop until they have enrolled at university as many of the universities run schemes to get significant discounts. my university is a member of this site http://www.studentstore.co.uk/ the institutions who have this arrangement are listed on this site. I'm sure other unis have other arrangement.

Ferris

01001011 wrote: »

Having used a netbook for a few months I can share some of my experience.

With my netbook, I have no problem running Photoshop (I use 7.0 though but others say CS3 runs smoothly) and watching HD videos. On the other hand, most people need no more than web browsers and document editors for their serious job.

As for the screen size, a 10" screen is as wide a an A4 paper so reading a notes would be a hard as reading a physical printout (I won't recommend a smaller screen). The keyboard is near full size and I just typed a 30 pages report using that with no problem. Again YMMV.

The portability cannot be underestimated. I often do editing work while traveling on the bus.

which netbook is this, just out of interest?

Blacksheep1979

01001011 wrote: »

Having used a netbook for a few months I can share some of my experience.

With my netbook, I have no problem running Photoshop (I use 7.0 though but others say CS3 runs smoothly) and watching HD videos. On the other hand, most people need no more than web browsers and document editors for their serious job.

I seriously doubt you are playing HD videos on a netbook - apart from the fact their displays aren't exactly HD (so there wouldn't be much point) they aren't powerful enough - they'll play divx fine though.

01001011 wrote: »

As for the screen size, a 10" screen is as wide a an A4 paper so reading a notes would be a hard as reading a physical printout (I won't recommend a smaller screen). The keyboard is near full size and I just typed a 30 pages report using that with no problem. Again YMMV.

The portability cannot be underestimated. I often do editing work while traveling on the bus.

Portability etc - yes it's great but with most running versions of linux, some less techincal people may find getting some things to work or getting some software an issue. I'd support a netbook as a backup/easy carry around but not as a primary computer.

mancmum

Hi there,

I'm happily using a netbook as my primary computer. I did opt for the windows version.

30% of our lecturing staff have ditched laptops for netbooks.

01001011

@Ferris I am using the Samsung NC10, same as MANCMUM.

Blacksheep1979 wrote: »

I seriously doubt you are playing HD videos on a netbook - apart from the fact their displays aren't exactly HD (so there wouldn't be much point) they aren't powerful enough - they'll play divx fine though.

Portability etc - yes it's great but with most running versions of linux, some less techincal people may find getting some things to work or getting some software an issue. I'd support a netbook as a backup/easy carry around but not as a primary computer.

The netbooks can play (most, if not all) 720p videos, even H.264 encoded ones, with some fine tuning.
Check out the 720p video tests here:
http://portablemonkey.com/article/720p-video-playback-on-netbooks/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcAjQ2hi3sQ

The bottom line is, we are talking a cheap computer for work. HD video and 3D gaming are NOT essential.