Geography and laptop

taurusgb

My DD2 starts university in September and needs to buy a laptop before she goes. She is taking a geography degree so before she buys the laptop are there any other students who could tell us please if she needs to be looking out for anything in particular - am thinking along the lines of does it need a special graphics card or anything to support any work she may be doing?

Thaks in advance

chris2289

Hi, I lived with a few people at uni who studied Geography. They all just had basic laptops as most of the uni work you only need ms office and internet browsers. Most uni's have all the complex software they will need so they shouldn't need it.

atypical

Basics are fine. I would recommend a minimum of 2GB RAM. All laptops will come with a graphics card suitable for her use.

You needn't even pay for Microsoft Office (don't forget students get it for £39 here) as OpenOffice is a realistic free alternative.

The_One_Who

As a geography student I would suggest a standard laptop with standard word processing, spreadsheet ability. GIS and statistical software will be installed on the computers in the department saving a lot of money.

Surfbabe

I emailed the department at the Uni to find out if DD needed anything specific for her laptop. She's not doing geography though! They were really helpful - its an expensive istake if you get it wrong especially if it is a course like architecture, media etc.

diable

Laptop for Uni, the only one that I would advise buying is one that is beer proof

bitsandpieces

You can always check with the department - but I imagine that any decent basic laptop (adequate for office software, Internet and e-mail) should be fine. If GIS etc. is needed, the university is likely to have computers for that purpose. No need to spend a fortune. Better to get something fairly robust, portable, and not so expensive that breaking it would be a mortal blow...