New Mature Student-help!

mattanne

Hi there!

I am a new mature student,I have a little money,how do I stretch it?Any advice?Do I need a laptop or is my new pc enough?
Matt

EthelBloggs

I would say your pc is enough unless you want to take a laptop to the library with you - I find doing this a godsend as it saves me lugging those heavy books home - I read and write down essay stuff as I go along and when i get home 90% of it is stored on me lappy.. or was til it got nicked the other day

DrFluffy

I guess it depends on the course you are doing. If you have any placements where you are required to live away from your term time address, then a laptop may well be useful. Generally a desk top surfices...

RachelB_3

Use your PC until you have more than enough to buy a laptop. Buy a laptop but dont buy the most expensive one buy a cheap but not too cheap laptop. Plus a grat way to save money is Freebies!!

Cypher

I'm in my 4th year of a BSc in Computing and I've never needed a laptop. There are plenty of PCs at Uni to use and I have my PC at home and work.

I would suggest instead of buying a laptop, you buy a decent sized USB Pen Drive 512mB or even bigger, they are really cheap these days. I keep most of my work on that. I can then continue to work on the same files regardless of which PC I'm on. I also regularly keep the USB drive backed up on my home PC incase I ever loose it or it goes faulty.

You may also be able to connect directly to your Uni files from outside of the uni. We can VPN into uni and this year we can also use Remote Desktop to log into uni.

So for me a laptop would never be a necessity.

DrFluffy

Where as for me it is an essential for placements etc.

elisebutt65

I'm just doing my 4th year and I've never felt the need for a laptop eithre - I use disks or Usbflash thingie. I can access Athens from home via Uni website so I can access all the E-Journals etc. I do have a Sony Ericsson P900 (smartphone) tho that I sometimes make notes on in class and then dl them to my pc, cos I can do this unobtrusively in a lecture - Can't see u being able to do that with laptop - lol.

Do you have kids or any disabilities cos you may be eligible for the Access to Learning Fund - you should apply anyway if you're really short - see posts further down that detail this.

I must get around to re-applying this year - they gave me £500 lat year - but I still feel guilry when applying for stuff like this even tho I am eligble with kids etc - Still feel there might be more deserving peeps out there - probably Catholic guilt upbrigining tho.

Anyway - back to OQ - No you don't need a laptop - have a look on Freecycle cos you never know someone might be junking one