To consider before buying a new Laptop/PC

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As a student, I think it is definitely more practical to have a laptop because you can work anytime, anywhere from it. Personally, I have always had a Dell laptop and it has everything I need: it’s easy to use, it wasn’t too expensive and it’s very efficient. As a student you are always working on assignments and stopping half way through, that’s why it’s much more practical to have a laptop that you can take everywhere.

The first thing to do before buying a new laptop or PC would be to go online or to a shop and compare prices to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth (www.dell.com and www.cnet.com are good ones to take a look at). Cnet gives you product reviews and comparisons to other hardware/software. As a student, cost is always an issue! So you want high quality for low prices as a bad quality computer can really slow you down in your work. You would also want to consider any extra things you might need for example what kind of a printer is compatible with the computer you’re buying and how much the ink to that printer cost.

Because we are students in Applied Psychology, it would be important that we have a lot of memory space in the computer to save projects, lecture notes and assignments and it would be good to have a computer that can run Photoshop (for our multimedia class). This would require a good CPU processor, the “brains” of the computer and also plenty of RAM (random access memory). Also, you would need a laptop with a long battery capacity as you don’t always have access to a plug.

One of the most important things to do is make sure that the laptop you’re buying has easy access to the internet and consider if you are going to have access to Wi-Fi, if you’re going to buy an internet stick etc… because being connected to the world and having easy access to information are two of the most essential things for any student especially considering that all of our lecture notes go up on an e-learning system.

Once you have decided which laptop you are buying, it is a good idea to look at computer accessories such as memory sticks or perhaps a plug in mouse or even speakers (www.misco.ie is a good website for this).