The Laptop Factor

The web author is Ma. Monica M. Wong, a fourth year student taking up Philippine Studies at the College of Arts and Letters in UP Diliman.
She is a creative writing major also taking up Journalism as a minor course.
She believes that all the drama in the world is just misplaced energy.

Finding the Right Budget Laptop for Students

In this day and age, people have grown dependent on technology. We enjoy watching television, listening to our favorite tunes on ipod, the list goes on. But most importantly, we enjoy surfing the web. With the advent of what we call the Information Age, tools for gathering news have evolved beyond simple observation and interviewing to include government records, archives, computer databases and most recently, the Internet. Of course you can't surf the web if you don't have a medium to connect you to the Internet. But your good ol' desktop, you later find, is not serving you its purpose anymore. You need something handy, something you can bring anywhere which you could use for word processing and surfing, just because you find yourself constantly on the go. And because you just can't get enough of this technology thing, you finally decided it's time to buy yourself a laptop.

But first things first, what is a laptop anyway?

According to Whatis.com, a laptop computer, usually called a notebook computer by manufacturers, is a battery - or AC-powered personal computer generally smaller than a briefcase that can easily be transported and conveniently used in temporary spaces such as on airplanes, in libraries, temporary offices, and at meetings. A laptop typically weighs less than 5 pounds and is 3 inches or less in thickness.

Laptops use several different approaches for integrating a mouse into the keyboard, including the touch pad, the trackball, and the pointing stick. A serial port also allows a regular mouse to be attached. The PC Card is insertable hardware for adding a modem or network interface card to a laptop.

Okay, now you get it. But how do you know which laptop to buy?

Before buying a laptop, you first need to consider some key features that will help you find the right notebook to suit your school needs.

Processor: Although a fast power processor is a big must for some, even Intel's Celeron M processor on some low-end notebooks can handle word processing, surfing plus a little computer games at a decent enough speed. But of course, a notebook with a Core Duo or Core 2 Duo Processor would be a big plus, especially if it's within the budget.

System Memory: A 512GB of RAM can already suffice student needs although 1GB of memory is more preferred. Many notebooks today are also available with 1GB of RAM, otherwise, you can upgrade your system memory later to 1GB for at least P2k. Just remember that the more installed memory your notebook has, the more applications you can run at once, and the better your notebook will perform.

Screen Size and Weight: The reason why these two key features go together is because generally, the bigger the screen size, the heavier the notebook and vice versa. Students generally need portable and light enough laptops to carry around school buildings. Therefore, lighter notebooks and the ones equipped with smaller screens are to be favored over ones with a much bigger screen size. However, also take note that generally, the lighter the notebook or the smaller the screen size, the more expensive it becomes.

Battery: Students also need a laptop with a long enough battery life which means that it should keep them working on their school papers or surfing the net at an average of roughly 3.5 hours on one battery.

Hard drive: The hard drive space should be at least 60GB for saving documents and presentations plus other files such as audio, games and pictures, albeit there are external hard drives being sold in the market today offering as much as 300GB, an advantage for notebooks with small hard disk space.

Optical drive: Most manufacturers offer laptops with rewritable DVD drives, which give you the most flexibility. Alternatively, you can purchase a notebook with a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive, to save money.

Communications: Few notebooks come with a full set of legacy ports anymore. Serial ports are rare, as are PS/2 ports (for a mouse or keyboard) and infrared ports. Most notebooks still have a parallel port and one PC Card slot, though many now offer an ExpressCard slot as well. Quite a few full-size models now come with a DVI port for connecting to an external digital display.

Most notebooks have at least two USB 2.0 ports; many offer four, and some up to six. A majority of notebooks include a FireWire (IEEE 1394) port for connecting an external drive, an MP3 player, or a digital-video camcorder.

Built-in ethernet now comes standard on all portables, with many models carrying gigabit ethernet. Many notebooks also have built-in Bluetooth. Notebooks using the Intel Core Duo or Core 2 Duo processors--or AMD's Turion 64 X2 processor--include Intel's wireless 802.11a/b/g chip set.

Some notebooks come with built-in wireless broadband wide-area networking, enabling students to access wireless service from various establishments like Starbucks, for example. This might come in handy especially when researching via the internet outside the school library.

Most also include one or more card slots for removable media such as CompactFlash, Secure Digital, MultiMediaCard, Memory Stick, or SmartMedia. (from Yahoo! Tech)

Operating System: Windows XP would be highly advisable for students as compared to the latest Windows Vista, taking into consideration the stability of the operating system. Also, Vista requires a higher system memory than XP which means that there should be at least 1GB of RAM on your laptop to avoid sluggish performance.

And last but definitely not the least, the Price: Students generally need budget laptops ranging from P30k to P40k, covering as much of the specs listed above.

Now that last one made it even more trickier. But don't fret, here are some budget notebook models to guide you in your search for the ultimate budget laptop available in the local market today.