Student Laptops

Spanna182

Hi all.

I live in the West Midlands, this is my first post for a requirement.

I'm just wondering if there are any 'Free Student Laptop' or good deals on Laptops within the area I live.

I know College students in Scotland get free Laptops but I have looked everywhere and I can't find one.

I'm not trying to be a cheapo, I just can't afford to pay £300+ for a computer when I have to pay for College trips as Im partaking in a Leisure and Tourism course.

Any help would be much appreciated, Thanks.

Grant.

dmg24

Hi Grant,

Have you looked at the free laptops available with certain broadband suppliers?

You are lucky in a way - had you been looking five years ago you would have been lucking at £800+ for a laptop! x

Elsterap

There is a £100 laptop if you don't mind using Linux.
http://www.elonexone.co.uk/
You can put a £10 deposit down to secure one for June 2008.

avebell

Elsterap wrote: »

There is a £100 laptop if you don't mind using Linux.
http://www.elonexone.co.uk/
You can put a £10 deposit down to secure one for June 2008.

I wouldn't recommend going for this one - it maybe cheap but yo don't get a lot with it - and Linux OS is the least of your worries with it! it's only 300MHz processor and it doesn't even have hard drive which means that it is like up to 16GB memory! and anyway it doesn't come with it so you have to buy memory separately by yourself which costs more money again! SO IMHO doesn't worth investing £100 if for £200-300 you can buy a decent laptop with 5 times faster processor, and decent hard drive on at least 60GB!!

Elsterap

Just so you can make an informed choice Spanna182, heres the facts of what avebell just said.

300mhz is a very low processing speed, however Linux is a very lightweight operating system which means the laptop will still run speedily for all your emails, internet browsing, word processing, excel, powerpoint and that sort of things. The bare minimum stuff really. If you wanted programs for image editing or flash animation it would either run far too slowly or wouldn't work at all.

As a business studies student who bought a laptop as soon as Vista came out, i wish i waited for the Elonex now as i have no need for anything fancy on my laptop, its just to portably do research and word processing.

Hope i've helped.

Lokolo

£300 isn't really a decent amount for a laptop, I would recommend you buy a cheap PC as this will more likely perform a lot better.

Is there any reason you wanted a laptop rather than PC?

avebell

Lokolo wrote: »

£300 isn't really a decent amount for a laptop, I would recommend you buy a cheap PC as this will more likely perform a lot better.

Is there any reason you wanted a laptop rather than PC?

totally agree - I'd recommend precisely the same thing if you need just a computer! But there are certain occasions where it could be beneficial to have laptop so you have it with you at all times! And yeah £300 isn't "decent" laptop - but would work much better than that little Elonexone and you don't have to buy it with windows - you can always install Linux on it as well like Ubuntu or something. and it will work faster

drbluebox

Spanna182 wrote: »

I know College students in Scotland get free Laptops but I have looked everywhere and I can't find one.

Wow is that new? I left college last year and my income was the same as my rent so lived off an access fund of £500 for the year and didnt get a laptop!

I do know at my parents town, the college there gives REALLY old pc's away to the poorest students but even then its very limited, and when I say very old PC's as in Pentium 1's with a cd rom drive and things like Windows 98 or 2000 which are on their last legs.

sohurt

The uni I went to gave laptops on loan to students with learning difficulties or who needed a laptop for specific reasons, I've been to one high school, two colleges and two universities and we certainly don't get free laptops! lol x

GlasweJen

College students in Scotland who are assessed as having a specific disability can apply for disabled students allowance to buy a piece of equipment that would help them to be on an even keel with non-disabled students. Many students with learning difficulties get updates to their home computer or a SAAS issued laptop so that they can run specialist programmes such as speech-text, text-speech, spell checkers made for dyslexic people, mind maps, braille printers and scanners etc.

It is completely untrue that all students in Scotland get a free laptop.

kiyamr2

Here at Teesside Uni, in the future they are hoping to make laptops available to every student! Thats what I heard today anyway...hope its true.:T