With each graduating class, parents and their son or daughter begin planning for college and with that comes the quest to find one of the best laptops for college students to take off to school with them. Questions include “what is the right model”, “what features do I need”, “do I need a laptop or will a desktop work”, and “what are some of the best laptop brands“.

Obtaining one of the best laptops for college students is much harder that you’d expect. The market is flooded with literally thousands of models all claiming to be the best. Hopefully there tips will help you find the best laptop for you.

If you grew up with a PC, you’ll say that PC’s are the best laptops for college students

Some of the more popular PC’s include companies like Dell, HP, Gateway, and Toshiba. PC’s are a great general use computer that can handle most tasks with ease. They’re also the go-to laptop for students when you’re on a budget because they tend to be very affordable compared to their Apple counter parts. You can pickup a good PC laptop for around $550.  If you want to stick with a PC, but are tired of having the boring grey colored computer, then you might want to look into some of those cool pink laptops that are available.

Note: Even the best laptops for college students usually don’t come with a license of Microsoft Office. While Open Office is a free alternative, most students will want to purchase a copy of Microsoft Office, the good news is students get a discount.

Students that grew up with Apple or Mac’s will say they are the best student laptops

If you were introduced or have used Apple computer before you will say the Macbook, Macbook Pro, and Macbook Air are the best laptops for for students. Their simplicity, reliability, and trendiness has done well for them. Now that Mac’s can run Windows if needed, they are becoming a great choice for a college laptop. They do however cost a bit more money than a comparable PC laptop.

If you are planning on spending over $800 on a student laptop then the Macbook is a great choice. It has everything a student could want is one of the best laptops for students. It has a Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB’s of RAM, Bluetooth, a webcam, DVD burner, and a great graphics card. Apple even helps students out by giving them an additional discount on not only Apple laptops, but also all Apple products including the iPod. Last time I checked you could get a Macbook with the student discount for between $840 and $900 dollars.

When the best laptop for college students means the thinnest, lightest, most ridiculous laptop for college students.

That’s when you buy the Macbook Air. This laptop isn’t the most budget friendly, but it definitely fits into the category of best student laptops. It’s just over 13 inches in size and has a total weight of under 3 pounds. It’s also extremely thin…and I mean thin. It’s just over 3/4′s of an inch thick. It also includes all the normal features and then some. So Bluetooth, wireless, a webcam, etc are all part of the package. It’s the complete package that unfortunately comes at a bit of a price. Although in the past 6 months the price has come down quite a bit. Make sure you notice and plan for the fact that the Macbook Air doesn’t come with a built in CD-ROM. They do offer an external USB CD-ROM though so don’t worry.

When looking for one of the best laptops for students it’s important to find one that has as many USB ports as possible. I made the mistake of getting a laptop in college that only had 2 USB ports. I thought there was no way I’d ever need more than 2 at any given time. I can’t even begin to tell you how wrong I was. Here is a quick list of the 7 things I had plugged in almost all the time when my computer was at my desk.

1. External hard drive for back up and storage of all my music, photos, documents
2. External keyboard because it was easier to type on
3. External mouse to go next to the keyboard
4. USB Flash drive that had my current school work on it
5. My digital camera
6. My iPod / MP3 player
7. My printer

You can see how this was going be a big problem. There are a couple of solutions with the easiest being to buy a laptop with a lot of USB ports. You probably won’t find any cheap laptops for students that have 7+ USB ports which is ok. As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, getting one of the best laptops for students should include Bluetooth which will help with the keyboard and mouse problem. You can also get a USB hub that turns one USB port into anywhere between 4 and 8 ports. They are extremely cheap and very useful. Believe it or not you can actually run 127 devices off from one USB port.

If you do happen to see any laptops for college students that do have the new USB 3.0 ports on them that’s great, but most likely you are going to see most of them will have USB 2.0 ports which is plenty fast and the current standard. It’s always nice to look forward and try to plan a head. It helps make your computer usable and relevant to the future which is great for making that computer last as long as possible.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be adding posts to help people find cheap laptops for students along with buyer guides and even laptop reviews for all the laptops I’ve used recently.

If you’d like to submit a review or have any recommendation for the site or other members please leave me a comment.  Thanks for stopping by laptops for students!

If you want a very low priced laptop (as in $200 laptops or cheaper), it follows that you could consider going for a used pc as an alternative to a brand new one. There could be a few plus points to doing so but the big one should be the reasonable cost. One more benefit that a large number of buyers will overlook is that a second hand machine will have been previously de-bugged, seeing as the current owner has been using it. Going this route can be tough if you’re looking for the best laptop brand and selection will be a little lower.

One more reason mini notebooks may be the ideal student tools is the low purchase price. Most students are mostly on a budget and these mini notebooks are a flawless fit. Many high specification mini laptop computers are currently priced within the $300 to $500 range, although quite a few perfectly satisfactory ones go for well beneath $300. Furthermore, store prices are already steadily dropping, consequently almost any student could currently afford a mini notebook.