Laptops

[drwhofan]

I'm starting to research buying a laptop, but I am completely stuck on some of the "technical" stuff. what's the difference between Internal memory and a hard drive? what's the average size of the memory etc? I really know nothing!

Also what are the best makes, bearing in mind I want it for when I go off to Uni, so I'll have to do assignments and research etc on it as well as play music and dvds and stuff....

Obviously it'd have to not be too expensive and I'd still need it to be able to work with microsoft and so on just in case. Any recommendations?

(sorry there's so many questions!)

[dannywells]

internal memory, you want at least 515mb, as for a hard disk aim for at least 40GB

for a student i would recommend an ACER laptop, loads on ebay

[dannywells]

heres one thats ideal for a student from from a reputable supplier

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/119776

[Kerplunk]

RAM (Internal memory) is used by the computer to run programs. The more RAM you have the more programs you can run at once without seeing a slow down of performance. Also browsing the internet mainly uses RAM along with processor.

Hard drive size is the amount of data that can be stored on your computer / laptop. Every program you install takes up space on the hard drive so look for one with plenty of room.

Now, how much memory / hard drive space do you need?

It is 512mb of RAM (Internal Memory) that you should look for as a minimum.

You should be looking at a hard drive of about 60gb or 80gb although 40gb will probably be enough.

Stay away from Celeron processors. Go for Pentium or AMD.

Dell do some very nice laptops at quite reasonable prices. Have a look here:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/fea tures.aspx/notebooks_good?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en& s=dhs

[fo3nix]

I can highly recommend the Apple Macbook. What's more, they give huge discounts if you get the laptop from their online educational store.

For �755 you can get a great future-proof laptop (I'm thinking of the white 1GB RAM model here), that will work flawlessly wherever you go, will have no problems with viruses (hopefully), and will do everything you could want.

[dannywells]

yes and most students can afford a �755 apple macbook...that and the fact most universities will be using PCS so wont have the same software as found on macs

[fo3nix]

I disagree. It'll fit in just fine; the uni doesn't force windows software, and networks are OS-independent anyway. But yes, the price is fairly high, but it's a quality high-performance laptop . Cheaper options will probably suffice though.

[Kerplunk]

dannywells I have read your responses to a few questions on here. Don't be so sarcastic. If you can help then do so, if not don't.

Your knowledge of computers appears to be very limited. Do you understand the basics of networking? If you do then you would know that a MAC will sit quite happily on a Microsoft / PC based network if configured correclty and that most (If not all) software that the uni will be using will have a MAC version or be MAC compatible.

[dannywells]

do NOT advise me on what I do an do not know it is not appreciated
A mac can be configured to work on a windows network, however this is hardly the choice for a student when uni network predominantly use Windows PCS
Here we have aposter who doesnt know the dfifference between ram and a hard disk, which is fine we cant all know - however you then expect that student to use software on his mac thats different to what everyone else is using on the uni network and expect them to configure it to connect to that network...get with the real world

[Belin]

Well said danny, we have no end of issues from new students getting confused between what software they should use on their mac because its not the same as we use in the university pool.
They almost always come back next year with a Windows laptop