Size
I’m was thinking of buying a laptop in the near future as it is becoming clear to me that one is needed in my applied psychology course, so this assignment will give me an opportunity to carefully consider what I would need. One of the most important aspects of a laptop to me would be the size, because I am traveling a long way every morning the device would have to be light so I can easily carry it. My girlfriend recently bought me a rather lovely satchel for college, so any laptop I buy would have to be small enough to fit in that bag. I am aware that the smaller the laptop this less hardware will be able to fit in it, I will have to balance convenience against processing power.
Memory
One of the most important parts of any computer would be memory, as a computer could have remarkably fast processing power but it will not be much use to anyone if it can’t remember anything. Memory is particularly important for students, we need to have a computer that can remember our lecture slides, our notes and most important our CA’s. When it comes to memory I have always found that more is better, and as the course goes on the demand for space is only going to increase. If you look at my multimedia lecture for example an absolute necessity is photo shop and depending on the version it could take up too two gigs of space. When I am getting this laptop I would ideally want upwards of a terabyte as this amount of memory would probably last the four years of my course.
Power supply
An element often overlooked when a person is buying a new laptop, but I believe very important is the power supply. For me who would be using my laptop mainly for college work the longer it can hold a charge the better. It is not always possible to be able to charge your laptop and say for example I have a two gap between lectures which would be a great time to get some CA work done, but if the work is on my laptop and I cannot get near a power socket I will be unable to make any progress on it. If a laptop can go a long time without charging it would also mean that I would not have to depend upon the computers in the library as they are always in high demand it is not always possible to get one. It would also enable me to get some work done on the go, my commute every day takes roughly an hour and a half but with a reliable battery this time would no longer be wasted as I could be using it to do college work.
Fan
Something that I have noticed about laptops is their tendency to become very hot. This is an issue that effects most computers and can cause performance issues. I know for example my own PC has three fans but the temperature gauge in the front is always high and the fans make a lot of noise trying to keep it cool. I titled this section fan instead of temperature management because I think that a fan is the only option for laptops because of their size. A heat sink from what I have seen would be too big unless they make ones especially for laptops and I have never heard of water cooling been available for anything except a PC. So I would desire as many fans as I can get on my new laptop to keep it running smoothly and coolly.
Video/Graphics Card
An important thing for me to consider would be the graphics card, in regards to college work it would mainly have to do with the work I do in multimedia. Because at the moment multimedia is the only one which would require me to see an image clearly on the screen, in the other lectures it wouldn’t really matter if I could even see colours. I must admit though the real reason I would like a higher quality graphics card would be so I could install and play newer video games on the laptop. Although admittedly not important for college work (unless of course I am studying video game addiction in cyber psychology) it would still be something that would affect which laptop I buy.
Modem
The ability to connect to the internet is fundamentally important to college work. Every lecture requires you to go onto the internet for something. It could be a YouTube clip to easily explain Milgrams experiment or finding articles that discuss something about technology that you are interested in. We take it for granted that a laptop will come with a modem these days but it is something that we should double check just to be sure. Along with the modem I would also require a wireless router to enable me to connect to the IADT network so I can use the internet while in college. This would make research for CA’s far easier than if I had to connect the old fashioned way with the wire. Although this would be unlikely as I would just purchase an external router like I have for my PC but I would want it already included in any laptop I purchase.
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