Buying a laptop for Applied Psychology

There are three main considerations to take into account when buying a laptop for a college course and theses are:

1.      Size.

2.      Processing power.

3.      Cost.

Size

Small is good. The usefulness of being able to take your laptop into college to transfer work to and from it could be huge when you’re working on multiple CA’s at a time, all the time i.e. on campus and at home. As such I’ve limited my searching to notebooks (or “MacBooks” and “Ultrabooks”). Apple, Toshiba and Dell offer a wide array of options that fit the bill. The MacBook Air is the smallest with an 11” screen without a compromise on the screen resolution or performance abilities with the Toshiba Portégé series a close second at 13.3”. Dell was the worst for the size requirements a college student would be looking for with their smallest screen being 15.6” screen on the Inspiron 15.

Processing Power

In our Multimedia and Design module we use Photoshop extensively. This kind of programme requires an excellent graphics card and equally impressive processor to function at maximum efficiency. Being able to take work home and spend an evening perfecting skills on Photoshop could be invaluable for an Applied Psychology student. An impressive memory would then become necessary to store the large Photoshop files. All 3 companies matched each other for graphics using the Intel HD graphics 4000 across the board. However Apple and Dell pulled away by both using Intel Celeron 1.7 GHz i5 processor with Toshiba lagging behind with an i3.

Cost

Although I left this factor until last to consider, the cost of each laptop is probably the pivotal factor which a typical college student would focus on when choosing theirs. The simple fact of the matter is, between registration fees, accommodation, cost of commuting and feeding themselves, money is not usually something a college student will have in abundance. As such, the vast difference in prices of the notebooks produced by each company becomes vitally important. Dell waltzed into the lead when price was taken into consideration. Both Apple and Toshiba struggled to drop below €850 (excluding VAT for Toshiba) and averaged in the €1000 - €1500 price range. Dell on the other hand boasted a price range of €400 - €800.

Taking price and processing power into consideration, despite having the biggest screen, the Dell Inspiron laptop series appears the best choice for an Applied Psychology student.

http://ie.computers.toshiba-europe.com/innovation/series/Portege-Z930-Series/1121045/banner_id/Portege_Z930/

http://www.dell.com/ie/p/popular-laptop-deals.aspx?c=ie&cs=iedhs1&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_air