Question on laptops versus desktops

[riggins44]

Next fall my son will be going away to college. Know in next few months will need to buy him a computer. I was wondering if should look at laptops or a desktop? What about these new mini-laptops?

 

[Lanky Livingston]

The mini-laptops, if what you are referring to are "Netbooks," are basically big blackberries. Can't really do much on them except surf, and maybe some word-processing. They have trouble with beefier spreadsheets and powerpoints. I would go with a laptop with lots of RAM, just because of the portability and usefulness, unless your son plays a lot of video games, in which case I'd go with a desktop. Of course the point of the computer won't be to play games, so maybe forgo that route?

 

[servumtuum]

I hang out sometimes on the campus of North Carolina State University since it's not far from where I live here in Raleigh and virtually all the students have laptops-I go there because the main library, among other things, has multiple high speed WiFi networks-I see almost no netbooks in use, no doubt for the reasons Lanky gave-insufficient power. I'd recommend a laptop myself.

 

[Neophyte]

I too would recommend a laptop and I would go a step further and suggest a Thinkpad from Lenovo. My company just issued them to all the field staff and I am impressed. These are some solid machines and mine runs like a top so far.

 

[Alaskan]

I too would recommend a laptop and I would go a step further and suggest a Thinkpad from Lenovo. My company just issued them to all the field staff and I am impressed. These are some solid machines and mine runs like a top so far.

I agree. Mine is a couple years old but it is a great machine. I use mine to run high powered business aps and it is great.

Also their tech support is out of Atlanta, I only needed them once but it sure was nice to talk to an American.