Buying a computer...

[Generic_PC]

Hey all!

I've been accepted to university! A very exciting event in my life. Now, because I'll be leaving my home, I will definitely need my own computer. My question is, considering I only want to buy one, what should I get?

I'm relatively illiterate as far as specs go, though I understand roughly what, for example, a processing speed of 2GHz means. Ultimately though, that means I can really only offer my needs in terms of what I want out of the computer.

As far as a list of necessities, it needs to be able to run microsoft office or something analogous. I'll be taking it to classes and suchlike, meaning a desktop is probably out of the question. Those are pretty much the only requirements. I wouldn't mind being able to run games (not Crysis 2 or anything I would need a true gaming laptop for, but maybe SC2 and Civ4 or Civ5?). With these extremely hazy guidelines, could I get some advice for a computer to buy?

[RobbyPants]

Aside from the gaming part, any low-end laptop would work.  As far as running the games, I'll let someone else give you suggestions.  I don't know much about video cards and on-board graphics for laptops.  When I built my desktop, I grabbed a separate card.

I don't have any brand loyalty, so I'll let anyone with actual experience fill in here.

As far as Office goes, you can grab Open Office for free and save yourself over a hundred bucks, unless you can get a really cheap discount as a student, or something.

[altpersona]

i believe that ms has put office online like google docs for basic functionality.

office software is not gonna be a problem.

i would get a netbook or an ipad. either will be fine.

[archangel.arcanis]

I want to point this out to you since you are going to be a student and all:

Open office can provide all of your needs for office software for free, but expect most of your fellow students and teachers to tell you how to do thing in MS office as it is quite prolific in the academic and professional world.

Also check out here MS may be a bunch of greedy bastards to the rest of us but they are very generous to students, gotta get them on the crack pipe young   I saw an ad for 10% off some PCs and I know they sell office cheap too. I would also ask your university about free/discounted software to students. They often have a deal with MS to give every student a copy of Windows that is free to them, sometimes they have Office for free/dirt cheap as well.

As Robby said your basic cheap laptop can do everything you said except some gaming without issue. I play Civ 4 on my laptop without any issues and it is a couple of years old with integrated intel graphics. If you can give me more details I can get you something more specific, but here are a few guidelines: If you have or will upgrade to more than 3gb of Ram make sure you have a 64 bit OS, 32 can only address up to 4gb and it shares that addressing with the video card memory and device addressing. I would recommend at least a duel core processor, I know civ 5 recomends a quad core but that will be difficult in a laptop without jacking up the price.

i believe that ms has put office online like google docs for basic functionality.

Yes it is called MS live and integrates with Hotmail and Skydrive.

Correction: ^^ That is called Office web apps and is part of windows live along with hotmail, skydrive, a photo program, and a video editing program. I'm sure there is more, I just don't use my live account anymore.

[Generic_PC]

I believe I'm correct in saying that my university, being known particularly for the Computer Science program, gives every student free installs of a couple Windows OS's. It also means everything has a really nice website.

I actually have OpenOffice on the desktop I use currently, and plan to continue using it in the future. Worst case scenario, if I don't know how to do something, I can google it. (Which is how I learned to use Word 2010 as well!)

What do you want as far as more details? Like I said, my computer knowledge is lacking, so feel free to elaborate to an insultingly basic level if you have to.

[archangel.arcanis]

Well then I wouldn't worry about office too much. For details just exactly what you plan on doing with it. Games in particular are pretty tough on requirements. Price range could help as well. This can help too, that site shows a lot of the current coupons for HP and Dell so you can hopefully find a good deal on something.

Hell they have a nice HP laptop on that page that may be what you want and for a decent price. currently 3rd item down.

[Generic_PC]

Well, something I found on the Microsoft website: a program to recommend a laptop. I went through the questions and came up with specs that look like...

2GHz+ Processor (Presumably 64-bit)
4GB RAM
250GB+ Hard Drive
256MB dedicated video card

Screen size/Weight/Operating System don't actually matter to me at the moment. Do these look like specs for reasonable laptops?

[archangel.arcanis]

definitely reasonable. Most should be standard or close to standard on most models.

[altpersona]

reasonable sure, needed? not really.

i would be concerned about screen size / weight / battery life than specs.

[Tshern]

The video card seems rather low end, especially if you intend to play. My laptop is two years old and it sports a 1 gb video card and the other specs are at least the same, if not higher. Wasn't that expensive either...

[RobbyPants]

250GB+ Hard Drive

Do you plan on downloading a lot of music or movies?  If not, that hard drive size should be just fine.  Otherwise, you'll probably see it filling up faster than you were expecting.

[BeholderSlayer]

Well, it obviously depends what you plan to do...but both the video card and RAM seem a little low-end. I run 8 GB of RAM on a desktop that's something like 4 years old, and my video card, while cheap, is also old and still at .5 GB alone (maybe 1 GB, I can't remember). If you plan to game, you might as well go for at least these levels, which shouldnt be too hard to get in a laptop these days (then again, I don't shop for laptops anymore, I am looking at more mobile devices such as quad-core NVIDIA ARM based tablets which won't be released for 5 months).

[Discord]

Assuming your intention would be for school laptops and not much else here we go:

-Asus or Toshiba
--These brands have the lowest manufacturer failure rates and also come with some of the best prices. Sony, Apple, and Dell come after in lowest failure rates, respectively. Sony and Apple are overpriced and typically not worth it, Dell is suitable if you find a deal or just want an easy way to shop.
-Intel over AMD CPU
--Lower power draw, this is changing in the very near future, I believe, but this should still be standard for most laptops on the market. (I'm slightly out of date these days.)
-i3/i5, 4GB of RAM, 250GB harddrive, generally any GPU will be fine.
--Should give you everything you need. You could likely survive on less, even. If you are doing gaming/picture or video editing GPU might be an issue.
-Battery life, this is going to be important as a student.
--Duh. Try to get a 9-cell battery if possible, usually expensive, but always worth it. A secondary battery is nice to have as well.

Basic buying advice:
Try to get a general idea what you want (my mentions above should help), and then size, 17" is nice, but 14"-15" is less bulky, and may be more suitable for you. Once you have an idea what you want, try to build one on various sites or see what you can find available. Various sites post weekly/daily sales, check them out (Gizmodo, etc)

If you're really being cheap and only require note-taking, a netbook should be fine, in that case they're almost all the same, so focus on battery life.

I think I've covered the general basics, but it's 6:30am! Good luck.

[Tshern]

Speaking of hard drives, externals are affordable and things such as movies can be stored to them with ease. Doesn't work for gaming obviously, but my 1 TB external has proven invaluable.