What Kind Of Computer To Bring To College?

Elfan writes "We've discussed laptops in education before and the importance of condoms and lockpicks. However, since its not to early to think about the Fall semester for incoming freshman, I was wondering what electronic devices people found most useful for college now. How do you keep yourself organized, a PDA of some sort or an old-fashioned calendar? What to take notes with, pencil and paper? Laptop? Palm pilot? Tape recorder? Or just too cool to take notes like in high school? One laptop for everything, with a docking station back in the dorm perhaps, or just a desktop? Both? All of this is made more complicated, of course, by the lack of funds most college students enjoy."

Comments

Re:Get an iBook or other mac

[tomstdenis]

PCs only last two years?

Whoa... ok heads up on my three year old Athlon system...

Stupid Apple users...

Hey dork, college costs an arm and a leg. Why not, not spend a years tuition on a laptop and just use paper/pen and maybe a 90$ tape recorder if you're in a bind?

Holy crap are people really this stupid. As if this is even an ask slashdot question. May I ask what you used during your decade or so of public elementary education [including high school]?

Tom

Re:Might sir suggest

[mccalli]

I've seen a professor pull a tape out of a student's cassette before, because the student was recording without obtaining consent. Needless to say, that's not a good way to make a first impression in college.

I agree. That professor has just made an appalling impression on me.

The professor should remember who they're working for. I used to use a dictaphone when I was at university (during 1990/93). Had a professor ripped the tape out of a lecture he was being paid to provide, serious words would have been had. This stuff is not their private copyright ready to sell into their latest book (and yes, we had a few "now you must buy my book"-types kicking about), it is a lecture designed to help my education. If I could record it for later note-taking, during the lecture I could just sit and listen. This approach helped me a lot.

Computers? Well, the computer I had at the time was an Atari ST, though part way through this made way for a Mac LC. I wrote my final project on that Mac - a MIDI-based music teaching package. Laptops were dreamland in terms of price, and probably the most common student machine would have been the Amiga A500. That's the most common machine - it wasn't especially common at all to have your own then.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:follow this advice, or regret it in perpetuity

[mausmalone]

LINUX r0x0rs! LOLOLOLOL! Seriously, you don't have to run Linux/Unix/OS/2 Warp to get good performance out of a PII 500. I've got WinXP Pro installed on a PII 400 and it seems quite happy (though with 256 MB of memory). All I'm saying is that you shouldn't underestimate the power of an old computer. Most observable lag time is from HDD access anyway, and a faster processor won't fix that. But if you wanna impress, get Callus or Raine... show them arcade games that crawl under Mame absolutely smoke on your li'l piece of crap.