Slashdot Mirror
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.
You'll do well to find anything that can organise you better.
I was SO tempted to spam the link to a laptop I'm selling on Ebay... but sometimes it's just not worth having the Internet hate you.
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.
tiBook.
/w it. Actually, the second is a lie. But I can dream.
You have unix and windows apps in one little box. AND you can pick up chicks
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Why, back in my day, we didn't HAVE laptops. We had clunky old XT machines that weighed about a ton and you were lucky if your desktop held them! You took notes then booted up your computer to put them in via edlin, and by the time you were ready, you were too drunk to care! Damn kids, get off my lawn! (Sorry, just realized new collegians this year were born in 1985. Caused a bit of a panic attack.)
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.
Do not bring laptops because they will be 'lifted.' Bring a big ugly honking computer. as long as it has a Ethernet connection, you wont need to move it. Strap it to some 45lb weights or something. if their going to steal it, make them disassemble it.
:D
You should not need a palm pilot or the like because your schedule will be the same for 3-4 months straight. If you cant remember to get to class, then you should drop out
If college freshmen want to really get their shit together, take notes on paper, and write down due dates on a calendar displayed in a prominent place in your dorm. Once that has become a habit, technology might make it easier, but until then, you have an expensive paperweight.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I strongly reccomend a desktop.
While laptop thefts aren't a horribly common thing, college freshmen brainfarts (tm) are. I say this while enjoying my first year standing. However, having spent a great deal of time with small office/home office/home-use computer consultants, I can say that laptop theft is *much* higher first year, than other years combined. (Non-scientific data gathering, to be sure).
Use common sense: If you make it portable, it is more likely to get stolen. It will also be more convienent, and probably better used. In my experience though, a desktop will be just as useful. If you need a computer on the other side of campus, you can probably find one to use.
Disclaimer, I go to RIT, all comments should be taken as though they are from someone who goes to school at an Institute of Technology
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
You need to get a feel for your college's environment before you know what computer you need. Some colleges are strictly Windows, others are strictly Linux, and most are somewhere in-between. I would recommend just bringing along whatever computer you currently have. It will be good enough for the first few weeks, and will give you time to find out what kinds of computers upperclassmen are using. That "standard dell package" that your school recommends might be overkill, or it might not be right for your major.
2. No palm - use your head.
I (physics undergrad) use a biro and a pad of budget paper for notetaking.
My computer is a big, completely unportable hunk of steel. It suits me fine. Laptops are useful for group work on campus though - it allows you to create an ad-hoc office anywhere. If funds permitted, I would like a laptop too, but my geekness demands that my computer be built with my own two hands.
Here is the important part - I have two friends, one with a Clie, and one with an iPaq. They don't use them. They were carried around for around a month, and then ditched. They use them in their rooms for reading documents in bed. I save money, using xpdf instead :-)
I got one of these in my second term at university and it really is a lifesaver. My 12" iBook is small enough to fit into a standard satchel and is light enough to carry around everywhere I need to take it (especially when much of my time is spent in the central library, particularly with exams coming up).
:)
My reasons for choosing the iBook over a PC laptop were various. There's the gorgeousness factor which is just hard to resist. More seriously though, Mac OS X is just a dream to run, and once you've got used to your iBook waking from sleep in about 2 seconds, you can't help but feel for those poor PC laptop owners. The 4 hour battery life is also very useful for studying out in the gardens.
Desktop PCs are a real PITA at university since you will inevitably end up taking handwritten notes, and if you're writing is anything like mine, they'll be redundant by the end of the year. They're also a great pain to carry up and down stairs (inevitable).
As for PDAs, I've certainly not felt the need for one since most of my contacts come in through e-mail and I'm near my laptop to check my calendar most of the time. That might just be the nature of our university network though...
Get yourself an iBook!
As a professor, I think I maybe had about 2 students using something electronic to take notes in class for the last two years (out of maybe 300 students total). One had a laptop, and one a Palm with folding keyboard. These were actually both students I had the year before last. I teach in the humanities, so I probably have fewer students who are really excited about computers than faculty members in other fields. I have to say that I wish students would stick to paper and pen, or at least find quieter keyboards; I could very distinctly hear the students in question typing, and it was sort of distracting. Although if a few tap-tap noises are the biggest problem I have to face in the next school year, I'll count myself lucky! I'd be satisfied if I could just get people to remember to turn off their cell phones.
This post is dedicated to all of those
-- 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.
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
Considering the most recent crop of Freshman/Transfer Students I have dealt with the two most important items to bring to campus are a functioning brain and a pair of scissors to cut the ever present umbilical cord...
EMA
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
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.
I just finished an MBA where laptops were required, so I was able to observe about 300 different machines on a daily basis over the course of two years. The school was fully wireless and we used them for pretty much everything.
My thoughts are that any laptop will be lucky to survive 4 years of college. Most of our laptops limped through the end of the 2-year program - and it didn't matter whether they were cheap or expensive. Battery life will be zip after a year, and you will likely run into optical drive and screen problems. Of the bunch, I would say that the Dell Inspiron line was complete, utter, garbage. They were flimsy, fell apart easily and everyone's battery totally died within a few weeks of each other. I had an HP, which was comfortable but required repeated major surgery. Toshibas and IBMs (especially) seemed to fare the best. We weren't allowed to use Macs, but my little sister uses an iBook that developed screen problems after a few months.
If you are going to go with a laptop, get the cheapest one with a decent screen and spring for the extended warranty. It won't survive, so don't blow tons of cash on it.
I'm really torn on the desktop-vs-laptop issue. I really liked being able to surf anywhere in the building and take notes/run simulations etc... in class (but keep in mind that you need to plug in power which most lecture halls lack). A desktop is a lot cheaper, much more powerful, much less likely to break (chance of laptop failure comes close to 100%) and much less likely to get stolen. If you are a gamer, it's just not economical to go with a laptop.
So in the end it boils down to whether you need the portability - if not, go with a sturdy, stable desktop for the four years.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Write notes by hand, transcribe them into a laptop or desktop PC later. Transcription is one of the best ways to get the content into memory at a pace that's good to learn by, and in the process you can stop and "flesh out" the contents of lecture by checking references, following interesting digressions, etc.
This is for going to college -- don't you mean ". . . when you dump Milwaukee's Best on the keyboard."
no comment
Honestly, if you're going anywhere but the community college, the school labs will most likely have all the computing power you'll need.
I was a computer science major, and after freshman year I left my desktop at home for my parents and just used lab machines. The school bought new machines for at least one lab each year, so it was just a matter of heading to that particular lab if you really needed the computing power.
Using lab machines has the added benefit of getting you out of your dorm room/apartment. I knew very few people that could work effectively for any period of time with their roomates trying to tempt them into a game of beer die/pong/whatever.
Flip-flops? Does it matter if you have J-K, D, or S-R flip-flops? Can you get away with a flip-flop built from discrete components, or does it have to be a chip? If so, do you need dip, or smt?
Oh, and what does this have to do with feet?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
If you really want to get the most out of your college experience, you'll leave all your gadgets at home. Those commercials you see on television in which people buy new mobile phones and suddenly get beautiful friends - that's a lie. I just finished my first year of college. I have a TI-89, a PDA, a mobile phone (with camera), an mp3 player, a minidisc player, a laptop, and two desktops. Although I am a computer science major, I can truthfully say that most of these gadgets serve one purpose - to annoy me - and have actively played a role in preventing me from socializing with other people, which is a HUGE reason (if not the only reason) to actually go to college instead of staying home and reading textbooks. Are you really going to keep an electronic calendar? If so, do you realize that everytime you have to schedule an 'appointment', you'll be fishing one of the above gadgets out of your rucksack and messing about with it? As for a laptop in the classroom - don't do it! All it does is distract you. The best thing to do is to take a notebook and a pen, and NOTHING else. Trust me on this. Your fellow classmates do NOT want to be interrupted because you forgot to turn your mobile phone off. Besides, anything you take in there, you'll be playing with. You may not believe this, but consider: On a recent day in one of my CS classes, about 30% of the students brought a laptop to class. I casually took a visual survey of what they were doing - only one was actually typing something that looked like notes. The others were surfing the web, chatting on IM (severe affliction - the prime reason NOT to bring a gadget to class), and several were even playing Counterstrike! The electronic classroom is a myth, folks - don't believe the hardware companies when they tell you it's the future. It's not, if you want to learn anything. So, as I've said - if you want to make the most of your college experience, leave the gadgets at home. They aren't worth it.
Get a laptop. An old laptop. Install the weirdest OS you can find that has a networking stack. Make sure you have a couple of battaries that hold a charge so you can take it to the library, coffee shop or lobby while your roommate is busy contracting and spreading chlamydia, or whatever STD is popular on your campus.
Here's the reasoning: you want to make sure that you cannot play games on your computer. You know as well as I do that if you can play games, you will. Intead of doing your homework. I know whole Counter Strike clans that failed out of expensive private universty educations. You must avoid this fate at all costs.
Sound lame? Yeah, it is. But think of it this way. You (or your parents, or the government) is/are paying tens of thousands dollars a year to send you to a place where you can aquire an education. It's very likely that this is the only shot you're going to get, and that if you screw up bad enough, you've got a rewarding carrear in burger flipping.
That doesn't mean that you shouldn't have fun; on the contrary, you should have as much fun as you can. But, keep in mind that you are packed into a tiny, grubby place with thousands of other people your age, some of whom are worth getting to know. Keep in mind that there are proffesors and staff who've dedicated their lives to educating punks like you. Keep in mind that there is probably an interesting city or town to explore. Keep in mind that there is probably a gym that's flat-out better than any fitness company you could find that you can just use, for free. And you're probably miserably out of shape. Keep in mind that there is probably a world-class library crammed with books you should have already read by now. Exploit all of these things to the maximum extent permitted by hours in the day and callories in your diet, and maybe you'll get your money's worth.
As much as I like video games, they are mutually exclusive with these goals.
So, get an old laptop. Resist the urge to splurge on anything more ostentatious than a Pentium II 500. Your friends will laugh at it. Tell them you're poor, and that they should fuck off. Instead of playing games, amuse yourself with your creaky old hardware by hacking cool software. Or whatever you like, so long as you're creating something. You don't need fancy-pants graphics to run vim, screen, ssh, gcc, mutt, LaTeX and xterm. You might need a little more oomph for javac, or mzscheme, perl, or the like if your classes need 'em. Gaim, naim, or ICQ if it improves your social life. xmms, but don't go nuts on the P2P networks. It's a waste of your time. If your roommate wants to waste their time, mooch of of him or her.
Trust me. If you think you need anything else, you need to re-evaluate your goals.
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.