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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."
A Palm m125, a lighter and a Wi-Fi capable laptop seems sufficient enough for most students I know.
KARMA TAG! You're it.
Personally, I bought an iBook half way through last year. Before then I had only a desktop. Let me tell you, having a laptop with 802.11b on a wirless-enabled campus is great. I was able to take notes in class, chat with my friends, and look up more information on an in-class topic in the event that I am confused about something.
I chose the iBook because I liked it's look and its price isn't nearly as high as a Powerbook or high-end Dell laptop. It also has 6 hours of battery life.
If I were you, I'd buy a laptop.
All the people with laptops stop bringing them to lectures damn fast, ditto palms. Just get some good (paper) notebooks and use a PC. You'll get less funny stares, and it doens't really help anymore to have it on disk.
Software, on the otherhand, is different. Whether its Waterloo Maple (my recommendation), MATLAB, or Python with NumPy, get a good mathematical analysis tool onto your computer and learn it. They will not teach you, but the assigments may very well be impossible without it.
And flip-flops. Bring flip-flops, or your feet will regret it.
Fake-ID is a must. Doesn't matter if its good or not in most towns, as long as the bouncers see something its usually good enough for plausible deniability on their part.
I have an Apple 12 in Powerbook. I can recommend it without hesitation for most use.
It has the advantage of being very portable, and will allow for most things you would need at a school. It can use common college things like Microsoft Word, but its also a great portable UNIX-like box.
Basically it allows me to do everything I would with a PC, but also lets me use software that is traditionally MAC like MAX/MSP and Peak.
Only disadvantage is alitte expensive and alittle hot.
Get it with the extra memory and airport!
Kind Regards,
Robert Ferguson
As a college student myself, I can state that your computer needs really depend on your major.
A creative writing major or history major may get my with just a desktop, though many may enjoy just a low-end laptop... If they play computer games, I'd stick with just a nice desktop.
Engineers, at the schools I've seen, spend much more time working in groups and on-site working on projects. I'd recommend a high-power laptop, with a docking station and keyboard back at "home"
The hard sciences rely on a lot of visual information, often best communicated by graphs and figures... For many, I'd just recommend a desktop. A laptop won't be that useful in class, because you won't be able to draw figures fast enough.
But... I'm a biochemistry major, and I use an Acer Travelmate Tablet PC. It's totally revised the way I do work-- For anyone who deals with figures and graphs and diagrams all day, I can not recommend a Tablet PC enough. I don't even have a paper notebook for classes anymore-- With my Tablet PC I can take all my diagrams and notes, and search them and organize them. It's great!
This statement is solely an opinion. Kindly take it as such in all cases.
That depends if there's a home machine already. If so, ditch the laptop and bring a real PC. Or, if you want the laptop, get the laptop but pick up an external keyboard, mouse, etc. Your hands will thank you.
I've found it useful to wait a bit into the year before buying electronics. Two or three weeks into the semester you'll have a feel for your classes and college in general. You'll know exactly what you want/need to help yourself along, plus most large-ish colleges have a lot of good deals on not only computers, but a bunch of other electronics deemed "useful." If your college isn't big enough to have stuff like this there's always other students to buy second-hand off of like you do with textbooks. I'd bring a cheap-o desktop that can do the basics and save your money till you get your bearings.
Any yes, lots of powerstrips.
"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."
My advice to you, is to see what kinds of desks your school provides. I go to GW and half the desks are exactly wrong for desktops. It's almost like somebody decided that they didn't like desktops (large monitors, etc) and made a desk to that it wont fit.
Laptops are nice solely because it is easier to move them around (which becomes a big deal when you're switching dorms every year).
Less is more in college.
-- get a laptop with 802.11
-- make your computing environment ubiquitous. Consider something web-based (or that syncs) if you happen not to have your laptop.
-- make your computing environment conform to the way you arrange things in your head. I've watched people turn "productivity software" into something they copy just all their notes, addresses, and appointments into for no real benefit. It just becomes redundant.
-- consider that some things might not be easier/faster/better with your computer.
My first Mac, my first post-Amiga computer love.
6 hours on a single battery charge (longer if you sat with the sunlight hitting the screen directly... no backlight necessary) with the HD turned off running Word 5.1 with 8 megs of ram and a 80 meg HD on System 7.1 and a Stylewriter II in the dorm room.
honestly, to write papers in college back in the day, there was nothing better... hell, there was nothing close. 15 pound Compaq not-so-compact 386 laptops? Puh-lease.
if you're not surfing the net, then if you want a note taking machine with a nice and quiet keyboard that can go all day long without being plugged in, you want a PowerBook 100.
then, go back to your dorm to a real computer of your choice and copy notes over from floppy or serial or docked SCSI connection.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
As both a CS student and a geek, I spend a lot of time in computer related tasks, and I just finished my sophomore year. Before I went to college, I built what was, at the time, a really nice desktop system that I've been very happy with, mostly for one reason: Desktops are very upgradeable (what was top of the line then is still top of the line now thanks to upgrades of ram and processor and such), and suffer fewer problems than laptops. There are always deadlines and due dates, and there's nothing worse than an out of commission computer.
Now, for that desktop, I highly recommend a flat panel monitor, because dorm rooms can be pretty tiny. I have a single dorm room, and with my CRT monitor, keyboard, and mouse on my desk, I literally cannot fit a sheet of paper on my desk surface. This summer, I'm gonna get a flat panel to remedy the problem, since they've come down in cost.
Now, recommendations about having a desktop aside, lately I've really been hankering for a portable machine, especially since my school (Vanderbilt) now has 802.11b access all over campus, so I think I'm gonna purchase a laptop. As far as the laptop is concerned, I don't need the latest Centrino or anything like that, I'm interested in a cheap system that will be portable and that I can use an office suite, a development environment, and to browse the internet, all during class and maybe extracurricular meetings. No gaming or heavy graphical work necessary.
So, to sum up, if you've got the funds, desktop is essential, flat panel is more or less essential, laptop is very, very nice to have (many schools even require having them now, and CS professors sometimes assume their students will have one) but isn't essential. PDAs aren't that great cause laptops are much more robust and powerful, and you're carrying around a bookbag usually anyway, so it's not necessary to have something fit in your pocket. I could see maybe owning a PDA strictly for scheduling, but thats about it.
Oh, and a cell phone. Every college student needs a cell phone, and you'll be left out if you do't get one.
barzelay.net
Ciryon
Most bang for the buck, just get a PC.
For $1000, you can get a reasonably high-end machine, suitable for research (if surfing porn counts as research), analyzing data (yeah, right, like you couldn't "process" that 15-point physics lab experiment by hand faster than you can enter it into the appropriate program), and of course, gaming.
I did have a laptop in college. You'll never use it. Really. Professors tend to talk in a highly non-linear manner, go back and correct themselves, make heavy use of diagrams, generally lecture in a manner not friendly to taking notes on a laptop. And we won't mention the high risk of having it stolen (no joke, those things vanish faster than a Catholic priest at a NAMBLA convention when the press shows up).
As for a PDA, if you can enter text quite a bit faster than most people talk, and use one of those spiffy progs that let you enter text or graphics with no effort to switch, you might find it useful. Personally, I can type faster than people talk, but even with practice, cannot enter text into a Palm even close to a normal human speaking rate. On top of that, I find using a PDA cramps the hands MUCH faster than just using a pen and paper.
So overall, bring a PC, because you will get bored very often, and may even need to do the occasional research or computationally-intensive homework. But in the actual classroom, computers still have no place.
A desktop system, probably built yourself.
HP 48G.
Those keyboard based PDAs are kinda handy, I wrote the first draft of a final paper on one while riding up to put a deposit on my post college apartment during finals week, but other than that they are a little pricy for their use.
If you don't lose things, a drafting pencil and white eraser.
A loud alarm clock, don't try to get away with a cheapo one, get a loud and tough one, it's likely to be the most abused thing in the room.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I strongly agree with you. My binder was a huge mess before I started using a pda. The thing was filled with scrateched notes I couldn't read a few days later, papers half falling out after I'd ripped them while in a frantic run to find specific information, and little arrows all over to show what information touched on what other topics.
Now I have all the notes from my last semester tightly organised in a pda, and was able to store all of it in something which fits into my pocket. Having everything so much better organised, and available at any time, really made a difference for me. It's easily one of the best purchases I've ever made.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Consider using a small (paper) calendar to keep yourself organized. If you do choose to go with a PDA, check out Due Yesterday from Nosleep Software (great homework organizer).
As for class notes, I use a 5-subject college-ruled notebook to keep all my notes in one place.
YMMV but this works for me.
I've had good luck not having my laptop stolen -- I attribute that mostly to the fact that I keep it in an ordinary-looking (but laptop-designed) backpack from Jansport. Keeping it in a pack that doesn't scream "I have a laptop inside" and is indistinguishable from other backpacks surely helps.
You got it brother. Pen and paper first, transcribe to computer back at the dorm/home. This way you "double-gel" on the info. I, and probably many others, can type "subconsciously" such that blah, blah goes in the ears and straight to the fingers, bypassing the brain altogether. You can imagine that that's not too conducive to actually learning anything. Also, I find that at exam time, reediting and summarizing notes (think writing personal Cliff notes) beats studying outright. For some reason, the editing task makes the content stickier in memory than plain studying outright.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
1. Get a laptop. 2 years ago I would have said laptops weren't necessary and that you could make due with the campus' workstations and a desktop at home. That simply isn't the case today. If your campus, library, labs, study areas, or clubs are wired then I highly recommend getting the laptop. It might not be as important during your first 2 years, but those last few years when you start taking upper-classmen classes, that laptop will give you a tool and an advantage to be more productive, flexible, and resourceful.
2. Get a flatbed scanner. I'm sure you can type up your notes and you might have a PDA around, but the vast majority of people do not. One of the things in college that you learn is that you should not be working alone and it is almost always more productive to work with other people. Despite what many techies were hoping for, a paperless world will not come into exisitance. You can bet your life that you'll have to deal with papers and other forms of hardcopy materials. The scanner is important because it will allow you to digitize any written material (handwritten notes, sketches, diagrams, library books, reference books) and convert them into a format that is easily distributed by email.
3. Get a freaking watch!!!!
I'm not going to spend the time to justify this one.
4. Setup an alternate email address aside from the one you're going to get fromt the school. When email starts to become extremely pervasive in your college life, you'll want a backup addess just in case. Trust me on this...it's a critical problem now when the schools email system craps out. Just imagine how much worse it will be when the use of email in universities increases over the next 5 years. Another reason to get a 2nd address is because you may eventually want to hide the fact that you attend a college.
5. Cellphone. If you plan on making a lot of calls to home or want to make yourself easily accessible to others, I say consider getting one. You don't need a fancy-ass, $300 phone, with a $80 monthly payment. Get something that works and keeps you in touch with others. You're in collge now, so you needs to start communicating and network with people. Note "network" means establish a some kind of relationship with other people, not setup a freaking computer network. (I know some of you think this is pretty obvious, but I've been seeing incoming freshmens for the last 2 years and they just don't understand the concept much less of its importance.)
At both universities I've studied at (U.Sydney in AU and Georgetown in the US) they've encouraged the use of laptops in the classroom both explicitly (by programs to reduce the cost of laptops for students) and implicitly (by the introduction of wi-fi throughout the classrooms at Gtown).
Moreover, the professors I've used a laptop with have all not cared because of my standing in class. Frankly, if I had a professor who was anything other than polite about it, I cant imagine I'd want his class. If your thoughts are so easily distracted that laptop keys throw you off, you might want to work on that little deficiency. Personally I cant imagine that the sound of keys is any worse that the already-present noise of people adjusting in seats, pens and pencils scratching on paper, paper tearing, pages flipping, etc.
"Stumble before you crawl"
If you have the money to spare, get a nice Apple Powerbook. If you need to get something cheap, get an ibook. Either way you have a solid *NIX box with lots of cool bells and whistles.
I couldn't agree more.
A laptop would be nice for programming classes, but only because you wouldn't have to fuss with floppies and platform variations. Laptops are worde than useless for notes though. Partly for the reasons you list (diagrams and equations) and partly because you remember more if you physically write the stuff down. Don't rob yourself of that valuable few percent you get from tactile-kinesthetic involvement! Every little bit counts.
I learned to get 1 thin 3-ring binder for each class. I like the ones with the cardboard binding, not the floppy cheap plastic ones, and make sure you get a different color for each class so you don't confuse them in your rush out the door. Don't reuse them, unless you're absolutely sure you will never need the info from that class ever again (hint, I wrote a research paper my senior year in high school that I reused, with some revision, in every English class I took in college). Also, get yourself a good 3-hole punch so you can get all the handouts, tests, quizes, etc. in there too. You can also get 3-ring pouches for floppies and CDs, which are handy.
At the end of the semester I just make sure everything for that class is in there, take out any unused paper, label the spine with a Sharpie, and stick it on the shelf. Having class notes organized and easy to find like that has helped me a great deal when it's come time to finally apply the stuff in the real world.
A PDA would be a waste, I think, unless you already are in the habit of using a dayplanner or something like that. It's much better to devote that carrying space to a good graphing calculator.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I teach philosophy courses. I have had one or two students with laptops (I think it's because I teach at a state school where most students don't have enough cash for laptops, unfortunately). I encourage students to use them, and to bring them to class. I figure: getting them used to computers and developing good skills--this is more than worth a bit of keyboard noise. I have had students do video projects, and submit term papers as web pages. I encourage all of this--because all of this technology is part of what a liberal arts education is supposed to do--*liberate* you, free you (or in another kind of jargon "empower you"). If every college student I taught left college able to write a simple web page (or operate a web design program or blogger) I would be pleased. Increasingly I just see knowing how to post things to a webserver as a basic skill like typing.
The problem, in my experience, is that many faculty *don't* have these skills. And they are scared of them--because it changes the classroom dyanmics. When 20 students have laptops and huge databases on them, then I no longer "own" the information in the room--I have to show students some other kinds of value: like an ability to think, to reason, and to help them ask questions about what their values and where their assumptions lead them in their inquiries. I just see this as making the classroom what I always thought it was supposed to be about anyway: less about "facts" and more about reasoning skills, critical thinking and sorting out the deeper questions.
Bring on the laptops!
Now if we could just find a way to fund them and address the issues of equality and justice (not everyone has the money for a laptop).
I may be one of the only guys in the world lucky enough to hook up with "the girl" in a CSE course. Turns out, she was kind of a freak, too, which made life pretty interesting for a while. But, that's exactly how I managed to pull it off. Asking if she wanted to "study for an exam" over the weekend, and then after the 2nd study session, we ended up at the bar. Make sure you save enough money for a social life, and don't spend it all on gadgets. Having a decent GPA is a good thing and all, but if you leave college without any social skills, you're doomed to a life of misery or failure or both. The girl ended up being a blast to hang out with one on one, but couldn't stop talking when we got around larger groups of people, and that was really annoying. So, I had to call it off and move on to chicks in other majors (stay away from Political Science... Chemical Engineers are fun, and the Business and Law School group is cool, too).
I just finished college in a high-tech major. I can say first hand that for the most part, a laptop is useless. Either get a cheapo desktop or just use lab computers. Palmpilots are for people with important things to do, not school. You will probabally be happiest with paper and pencil in class, and the desktop is just nice for internet/email/etc. If you want a game system, get a playstation. It will bring people over to you to play games instead of making you a hermit loser playing quake with people in craplakistan.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.