Which laptop to buy for college?

[dsigma6]

tarzanboy- what's with your hard-on for christopher_wolf?

[mahyar]

You can do what I did, for your price range is to find a local, used semi-broken laptop and repair it by purchasing parts. If you inspect the thing before hand and keep in mind general part prices you might just get a good deal.

[christopher_wolf]

tarzanboy- what's with your hard-on for christopher_wolf?

Hard on? *That* kind? I suppose that is the Freudian way of looking at it.

No, that is just a troll, dsigma6...

Either or immaturity, or possibly paint fumes, must have prompted that post.

I would advise everyone to keep their comments clean, professional, at or preferably above standard, and above a certain threshold modicum of sense, unlike the, late, post in question.

Carry on.

[mfratt]

You will be much happier if you forego the laptop for the time being.

Most of my computer time at college (as a freshman, anyway) was spent playing network video games with people in my dorm.

Your $300 will go WAAAAY farther on a desktop machine. I dont' know what you study, but a laptop is nigh useless in class. It is much better, and much easier to take notes by hand in a notebook.

Unless your school is in the dark-ages... there will be computer labs within a 7 minute walk of anywhere on campus which makes it easy to check your email or do computer based HW. The only advantageto having a laptop is being able to type up lab reports or papers in your girlfriend's dorm room or outside or whatever.

Nowadays you can just use a USB stick to save whatever work you've done and take it home or just email it to yourself.

I'm a Senior in *High School* and I find having a laptop very, very useful. I've used laptops in class since Sophmore year, and I couldnt work without it. It helps me stay more organized, avoid my crappy hand writing, there are no more hand cramps, fewer notebooks to carry around, and when I would need a computer anyway, I have my personal computer right there with all my stuff and settings already on it. Not to mention, when I do have unstructured blocks, I can watch ripped movies, listen to my music, play games, and browse the tubes.

The First few months of having a laptop, it was quite distracting in class. I was always online or something instead of paying attention. I imagine that if you launch into college and start using your laptop all of a sudden in class, you would go through something similar (especially where the teacher doesnt walk around the room like in HS), but it gets old after a little while. The beauty is that, if you need to check your email real quick or there is something that you need to do on your computer which is more important than the class, you can do it (I cant tell you how many essays i've finished a few classes before they were due by typing them in class).

[christopher_wolf]

I will also add that you can copy formulas and other non-standard, non-ruled contextual, quite easily on a laptop, there are many ways of doing this. Typing it up in LaTeX, if one is clever enough, is an excellent way of dealing with any forumlas one may encounter and it is *far* easier than selecting symbols by mouse clicks in Word.Or one could go with the X41 Tablet and have macros, easy to find on the web, that convert handwriting strokes into the proper forumlae elements. All this goes along with what I said before; laptops are useful in the classroom *if* one is clever enough and knows how to handle it and multi-task, etc.

I cant tell you how many essays i've finished a few classes before they were due by typing them in class

Quite useful too. They also make teaching most engineering and science classes better once you can have the students get acccess to the latest articles in journals, code up the program or shape the model in AutoCAD, ADINA,Marc-Mentat or another CAD+FEA combo, then solve it right there and prove literally 3/4 of the results of the paper without having to go to a mechanical or materials lab.

[dsigma6]

mfratt- you just said you're a senior in high school, but another post of yours talks about your freshman year in college.

...

MOD EDIT: I think you need to back up any accusation like that. A search of this forum reveals no such connection. I believe you are confusing mfratt quoting TarzanBoy. GomJabbar

[pianowizard]

So cursed, what did you end up buying for college? If I were you, I would have bought one of those $319 Buy-It-Now (including shipping) X30's that some guy was selling on eBay last week. He had about twenty of them. Too bad I didn't come across this thread until just now; I would have told you about that auction.

[pianowizard]

Okay, I just found out what cursed bought by looking up his/her recent posts: an X22. A good choice, especially if it's a model with internal wireless (like the one I owned for about two weeks).

[dsigma6]

MOD EDIT: I think you need to back up any accusation like that. A search of this forum reveals no such connection. I believe you are confusing mfratt quoting TarzanBoy. GomJabbar

Indeed it was a mistake I made late at night. However, it was just an observation and I asked for clarification.

[TarzanBoy]

tarzanboy- what's with your hard-on for christopher_wolf?

I haven't read the site in a loooooooong while and I think my reply is gone. What did I say?