Student laptops are easily described by either the word cheap, or value. Students usually work on a reduced amount of cash and they would find it kind of hard to buy a business class notebook, therefore I’m trying to put some thought in the matter and see if I can advise a few laptops for college students to buy.
What students usually need is the ability to wordprocessing and make presentations, probably a some gaming to unwind after a stressful day, and long battery life to be able to take notes during classes throughout the day. We also assume that we want all this, or the key elements to be available cheap.
Let’s see our first contestant, the laptop I’ve already mentioned in another article.

HP G60-630us

What worth mentioning here is that it’s a pretty full-on value computer in the sense of processor power and amount of memory and hard disk capacity. What I like about this computer is that it is still reasonably priced. HP doesn’t disclose battery life, but it comes with a 6 cell according to the specifications, and that allows me to suppose 2 to 3 hours of uptime on a charge given normal circumstances.
It comes with 2.2 ghz Dual core pentium (t4400), which translated to non-geek means that its still pretty fast at doing what it’s supposed to. 3Gb memory is default, you don’t really need more than that unless you go to media school and chop videos to no end. 320 gb hdd and 1366*768 allows the user to hold and store quite a few tracks and movies and watch them too. Overall, I like the machine as it is, and it goes for as low as $530. Good student laptop.

Asus 1005ha

Asus 1005ha is our other contestant and if you are at all into computers you might sigh reading this, but hear me out. This is a 10” netbook with an 1.6ghz processor, 1 gb memory, and 160 gb of hard disk capacity, but the punchline carries the whole thing, it runs for 8 hours on one charge. Yes, it does, I’ve personally tested it. It is still enough, to take notes, and play movies, music while preparing for the next class, and you won’t run out of juice even when browsing some semi-heavy flash packed site. I like it, and I would recommend it to anyone who is on the budget and don’t plan on playing anything that seriously hogs resources. Under $400, it is a great computer for students in my opinion.

The third and last computer on the list is nothing particularly interesting either, but we are looking for some bang for the buck, so here it goes:

Dell Inspiron 1545 15.6

2.1ghz cpu, 4 gb memory, and a 250 gb hdd makes sure that you can perform the tasks you can come across with this computer. Pretty regular 15,6” screen, it doesn’t add much strain on the eyes other than what’s absolutely necessary. I’ve seen it sold for $540 new, so that coupled with the fact that the factory claims it to run for 4,5 hours on one charge, without taking a second look I’d warmly advise this laptop.

I am pretty sure that I’ve left a few comps out of the list, they probably are not the best laptops for students, and I myself am not a big fan of macs, these are the ones I could grab and give to my son going to college, if I wasn’t cheeky young and had a son.

Related articles:
Which Laptop is Right For You?
Mini notebook computers