What Kind Of Computer To Bring To College?

Elfan writes "We've discussed laptops in education before and the importance of condoms and lockpicks. However, since its not to early to think about the Fall semester for incoming freshman, I was wondering what electronic devices people found most useful for college now. How do you keep yourself organized, a PDA of some sort or an old-fashioned calendar? What to take notes with, pencil and paper? Laptop? Palm pilot? Tape recorder? Or just too cool to take notes like in high school? One laptop for everything, with a docking station back in the dorm perhaps, or just a desktop? Both? All of this is made more complicated, of course, by the lack of funds most college students enjoy."

Might sir suggest

[gazbo]

The lost art of paper and pen?

You'll do well to find anything that can organise you better.

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Wireless notebooks in class

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it harder to pay attention if you're IMing, pulling tunes and pr0n off Kazaa, and so on than if you're taking notes on paper?

Re:Might sir suggest

[Alex Pennace]

The typical college student will keep too much crap in their Crapper Keeper to be organized. A note not found is a note lost.

Get an iBook or other mac

[Dr Reducto]

I am going to college next year, and I am going to get a new mac before I leave, cause Macs are good for 4 years compared to PC's, which only last 2. Although someone pointed out that I will probably have my laptop stolen, so maybe don't bring a laptop.

Habits Before Technology

[goldspider]

Save your money and don't buy the hype. Just because you may look cool and all that with a $500 PDA, if you don't have any discipline, no chic gadget is going to get your act together for you.

If college freshmen want to really get their shit together, take notes on paper, and write down due dates on a calendar displayed in a prominent place in your dorm. Once that has become a habit, technology might make it easier, but until then, you have an expensive paperweight.

Don't buy a computer before you start.

[pokka]

You need to get a feel for your college's environment before you know what computer you need. Some colleges are strictly Windows, others are strictly Linux, and most are somewhere in-between. I would recommend just bringing along whatever computer you currently have. It will be good enough for the first few weeks, and will give you time to find out what kinds of computers upperclassmen are using. That "standard dell package" that your school recommends might be overkill, or it might not be right for your major.

Laptops and other gadgets

[Anonymous Coward]

How come that a college student, who, by definition, knows nothing much and is not all that important, seems to require PCs and laptops and PDAs, while so many very accomplished engineers out there, with lots of years of experience nad savvy, can make do without that paraphernalia?

Re:Wireless notebooks in class

[FrEaK7782]

As the professors at my school like to point out, you're paying for the education. If you choose not to take advantage, you're throwing your money away. But it's your choice.

From the perspective of a Mac user...

[Millennium]

Get a laptop. And if it's a Mac, get the Omni Group's excellent OmniOutliner software; that thing is a freaking godsend when it comes to taking class notes. Best money I ever spent in school. I still use it for all kinds of other stuff, now that I'm out of school.

Kensington Lock

[chrisd]

Whatever you get, spend the 25$ on a kensington lock [amazon.com] for your laptop, then if someone wants to steal it from your dorm then they can take your bed or whatever you've bolted it to with them.

Also, whatever you get, make sure it has a burner so that you have a backup of your data up for when you dump a guiness on the keyboard.

Chrisd (yes, I'm hard on laptops)

Old fashioned but effective

[swordgeek]

When I was in university, the 386 had just hit the stores so this is a bit out of date. Nonetheless, even though I type faster than I write, I find that stuff sticks with me MUCH better when I commit it to paper with my own cramped writing hand. If you want it on a computer afterwards, then typing it in from your own notes is a GREAT way of reviewing--if you have the time.

However, try any note-taking methods that you can manage, until you find one that pushes data into your brain as effectively as possible. We're all built too differently to give anything more than rough guidelines.

Re:Notebooks, all the way

[Stalus]

On the other side of the issue, laptops are distracting. The continuous clickety-clack in a room that is silent other than the professor talking is annoying as all get out. And it's better to use paper for anything requiring diagrams or equations anyway, which was probably 90% of what I bothered to write down.

I do recommend having a laptop though. I got my Thinkpad my junior year and it was definitely worth the money. I was co-oping, doing research, and taking classes at the same time.. and it allowed me to do anything at any time no matter where I was. I could do research at home, work from the CS labs, and my schedule was no longer centered around where I was, but instead on what needed to get done.

Re:Might sir suggest

[muon1183]

I wholeheartedly agree. While a computer is important (I suggest a laptop light enough that you can cary it with you but with enough features that you can use it as your primary machine), nothing beats a pen and a notebook for taking notes. I never took notes in high school, but I realized the first day in my first college math class that I would need to take notes. There is no way to remember all of the theorems their proofs without notes, and unless you can type latex at 80+ wpm, go with the pen and paper. The same applies to most other science/engineering classes. There is just no way to get diagrams/formulae/complicated notation down fast enough in a computer.

Re:iBook

[Anonymous Coward]

iBook bad.

Do you really want to trust Ogg the Caveman's opinion of laptops?

Believe nothing this poster says. The iBook may or may not be slow, depending on what you're trying to do with it. You're not buying it to play games with, or to run CFD simulations on. You're buying it to do word processing and Internet stuff, basically. For this, an iBook is more than sufficient.

Ugly? Whatever, Ogg. Take your generic black laptop to an off-campus Starbucks and see how many Kappa Delts ask you about it. Try the same experiment with an iBook.

Impossible to service? What service? If it breaks, take it to an Apple store, or if your city lacks one, call Apple. They'll ship you an empty box, put laptop in, send laptop off. Laptop returns to you good as new. And that's if it breaks. It most likely won't refer to the recent story about how Apple has the highest customer satisfaction of any computer company.

And when I got to what you said about the "pointing device", I knew you were either a caveman or a troll. It's called a trackpad, dude, and it's the only way to go. I can only assume you're comparing it to those little nipples that IBM puts on some of their laptops. What a waste of keyboard space those are. If I wanted to drive my computer like I drive my nintendo, I'd buy a damn game pad controller.

Get something made by a company that knows what it's doing, laptop-wise: IBM.

Get something from the company that INVENTED THE FUCKING LAPTOP: Apple.

Whiteboard

[slyckshoes]

Spend $20 on a cheap whiteboard and some markers. Have a column for each class on your whiteboard. Update it daily with assignments and due dates. If you want, have another column for things that must be done by tomorrow/end of day. I discovered this process as a senior (in CS engineering) and it was more effective than a planner/iPaq/notebook. You also have the satisfaction of crossing/erasing things. It's also very easy to maintain and can be color coded.

Some thoughts on laptops

[Lev13than]

I just finished an MBA where laptops were required, so I was able to observe about 300 different machines on a daily basis over the course of two years. The school was fully wireless and we used them for pretty much everything.

My thoughts are that any laptop will be lucky to survive 4 years of college. Most of our laptops limped through the end of the 2-year program - and it didn't matter whether they were cheap or expensive. Battery life will be zip after a year, and you will likely run into optical drive and screen problems. Of the bunch, I would say that the Dell Inspiron line was complete, utter, garbage. They were flimsy, fell apart easily and everyone's battery totally died within a few weeks of each other. I had an HP, which was comfortable but required repeated major surgery. Toshibas and IBMs (especially) seemed to fare the best. We weren't allowed to use Macs, but my little sister uses an iBook that developed screen problems after a few months.

If you are going to go with a laptop, get the cheapest one with a decent screen and spring for the extended warranty. It won't survive, so don't blow tons of cash on it.

I'm really torn on the desktop-vs-laptop issue. I really liked being able to surf anywhere in the building and take notes/run simulations etc... in class (but keep in mind that you need to plug in power which most lecture halls lack). A desktop is a lot cheaper, much more powerful, much less likely to break (chance of laptop failure comes close to 100%) and much less likely to get stolen. If you are a gamer, it's just not economical to go with a laptop.

So in the end it boils down to whether you need the portability - if not, go with a sturdy, stable desktop for the four years.

Re:Might sir suggest

[Mysticalfruit]

You should think about getting one of those laptops with a built in camera, so when the prof. starts drawing diagrams just grab the frame.

Also, provided you've got enough harddrive space you could record the lecture into mp3 (at a low bitrate) and make an archive of the whole thing.

Actually, what would be a really cool application that would sorta automate the whole process. It would record the audio in the background while giving you a place to write timestamped notes (you'd hit a button when the teacher said something of interest) and write a quick note. You could also hit another button and it would take a time stamped snapshot and also put a marker in the notes as well...

But why plan to waste time?

[sulli]

This is what I don't get. It's clear that having a wireless notebook in class is a big distraction. Wouldn't the savvy student (perhaps what the Ask-Slashbot is wishing to be) want to avoid being distracted and get the best education possible?

I had a laptop in school (Powerbook 145, I'm really dating myself with that reference). I NEVER typed in class - too much trouble! Do kids just type faster now?

Re:Might sir suggest

[Anonymous Coward]

Collecting all your notes in one place isn't an ideal solution either. Theft, loss, or destruction of that one resource could be devastating. I was really disgusted when I lost a year of essays to a virus on my old MacSE. Back-ups can help to a degree (not saying you can't prevent what I experienced), but then we start moving beyond the obvious budget constraints. I also think that lugging around yet another object on campus and in class is a big pain.

I'm glad I didn't have a portable in my early years at college...I would've been too distracted. I can't live without it now, but that's for work which is a much different environment.

My opinion: learn how to use the dead tree resources and go with a very cheap desktop solution for essay writing and archiving. You'll save money and probably learn some organizational skills.

Transcribing.

[Lemmy Caution]

Write notes by hand, transcribe them into a laptop or desktop PC later. Transcription is one of the best ways to get the content into memory at a pace that's good to learn by, and in the process you can stop and "flesh out" the contents of lecture by checking references, following interesting digressions, etc.

Re:Habits Before Technology

[goldspider]

"How is a paper calender stuck in one place going to do that for you?"

It won't, and neither will a PDA if you haven't trained yourself to enter each and every assignment. As long as the discipline isn't there, neither a $5.00 calendar, nor a $200 PDA will help you. And which investment are you more prepared to lose?

it's all about the wireless...

[anthonyrcalgary]

I went the laptop route (iBook), and the U of Calgary has reasonably good wireless access, so I'm pretty happy with the results.

What I like about a laptop in general:
-tunez wherever I go.
-wireless access in class keeps me awake when I'm bored to tears.
-My writing is slow and messy, but with a laptop I have enough spare time to actually try some of the stuff being discussed.
-The lab is crowded and noisy, but there are plenty of areas with wireless that are not.

What I like about an iBook in particular:
-good battery life
-small (12 inch)
-MacOS is pretty stable (usually reboot with every OS upgrade)
-The school's comp sci servers are Solaris, I have a Linux box at home... Moving between these is pretty much effortless, whether I'm sitting at the console, SSHing to them, or compiling code on them.

No, you need THIS kind of Palm

[devphil]

I wish I'd carried one of these [thedaily.com] in my CS courses.

Re:Might sir suggest

[stefanlasiewski]

Even the most rudimentary of PDA's, (such as the Palm Zire) manage to do a better job.

Maybe we're witnessing a generational gap (But I'm only 30), but PDA's are wayyyy less efficient then my quill, papyrus and brain. I can scribble notes, diagrams, arrows on a notepad at close to the speed of thought, and am probably 10-20X faster then with a PDA or computer, especially when switching from writing to diagrams to arrows back and forth)

Granted, my notes are generally pretty lightweight and used for reminders after the class. I find that if I take too many notes during class, then I don't pay attention to what the instructor is saying, and miss many subtle points. This is particularly true during heavy lectures.

My PDA is fine as an addressbook and calendar (especially for repeating items). But it is way too slow to use for taking notes?

It often takes me about 5 seconds to search 5 pages of notes for a keyword.

On a Palm, I am so distracted with typos and unavailable characters with the graphiti system, that I don't pay attention to the lecture. It takes me 10 seconds to find out how to make a character like '@' or an epsilon. With a pen and paper, I can just write it out.

Laptops are ok for taking notes (I can type pretty fast), but are horrible when switching between with diagrams and text. I've tried a couple of the tablet computers, but they are so laggy compared to paper & pen, and really expensive!

Plus, I can buy paper for $3/ream and a decent pen for $3. A PDA starts about $70. Those fancy

Save your money.

[MBooty]

Honestly, if you're going anywhere but the community college, the school labs will most likely have all the computing power you'll need.

I was a computer science major, and after freshman year I left my desktop at home for my parents and just used lab machines. The school bought new machines for at least one lab each year, so it was just a matter of heading to that particular lab if you really needed the computing power.

Using lab machines has the added benefit of getting you out of your dorm room/apartment. I knew very few people that could work effectively for any period of time with their roomates trying to tempt them into a game of beer die/pong/whatever.

Palms are rather useless when compared to a laptop

[arcite]

IMO don't go for a Palm or any other expensive pda. You may thing that you will make good use out of it but you would be better suited to put that money into getting a laptop. Two years ago when I was still in uni I bought myself a Handspring VISOR and thought it would work wonders with my organisational skills. Truthfully it did help alot with keeping track of contacts and to plan my life.... but in all honestly I could have accomplished the same feat with a $5 paper organiser. My point is that if money is tight....spend it on something that will be TRULY useful such as an Apple iBook or some other laptop computer. You can still store your contacts and use calender programs on a laptop PLUS you can play better games than tetris on a tiny 3in screen. Laptops give you more features and will out last any PDA on an order of magnitudes longer. I have a laptop now, but I really wish I had one back then instead of a VISOR (as cool as it was) ;) So go for the Apple iBook!

Re:For GVSU ...

[stefanlasiewski]

Wi-Fi capable laptop

Great! When I want to copy your notes, I won't need to look over your shoulder any more. I'll just eavesdrop on your wireless connection, and slurp up your Documents folder.

And if it's a really competitive class, I might just wipe your harddrive when I'm done.

So, if you're going to use wireless, don't forget to use some decent Wi-Fi security [nwfusion.com].

Re:Might sir suggest

[Mr.Intel]

As somebody who teaches many college freshmen each year, I can tell you that you'll be out on your ear quickly if you're clicking on laptop keys in my classroom.
About recording a class on tape: make sure you always get permission. I always allow this, but I like to be told. I've seen a professor pull a tape out of a student's cassette before, because the student was recording without obtaining consent.

What kind of nazi university do you teach at? I have *never* taken paper notes in three years and have *never* been asked to put the laptop away. Granted, it is a quiet keyboard, but the concept of technology discrimination is absurd. Furthermore, to ask a student for a tape recording from class that he/she made is illegal at best and harassment at worst. I wouldn't be surprised if you were sued!

Re:Some thoughts on laptops

[cybermace5]

I went to an engineering college [rose-hulman.edu] where laptops were mandatory. They've done it for ages...I think the original laptops were 486/33's.

I used my laptop every day, 16 or even 24 hours per day, for 4 years. The vast majority of classrooms had network ports and power outlets at every seat. Many professors required in-class laptop use.

I didn't find it useful for taking notes. If tablet PC's were around at the time, it would have been great: I can type as fast as the professor can talk, but I can't draw a picture or complex formula as fast. There was one kid who did everything in Maple, and would jump into Paintbrush, draw a diagram, and insert it into the document in realtime...but he was insane like that. But a tablet PC...if you can switch instantly from typing to drawing...would be excellent. One approach I found useful was to type notes on the computer, and use a notebook to draw formulas and diagrams. Then you can use the day's date and a reference number to link your text to your drawings easily.

Get a laptop. And...do NOT cheap out on this...the best four-year warranty you can buy. My laptop (an Acer Extensa 710T) used up a hard drive, a motherboard, a screen, a power supply, a power regulator, and multiple plastic parts including the entire top of the case and LCD bezels. Strangely, the battery did not die, and I can still get about 1.5 hours out of it. That's because I didn't succumb to the stupid "memory effect" myth that doesn't apply to Li-ion batteries. I simply read the user's manual where it said the battery was good for a couple hundred full-discharge cycles, and about a thousand partial-discharge cycles. So I only used the battery when no power was present.

People will say that a laptop can get stolen from you very easily. Never happened to me. Unlike a desktop, you can take a laptop with you! So the desktop is far more likely to be left unattended than the laptop...and yes, people do break into quiet dorms or apartments and steal computers. A cable lock is a good investment, if you want to leave the laptop in your room with the door open while you chat down the hall. I've known people to lose their computers that way. First few weeks every year are the most dangerous, because no one knows who everyone is on their floor.

I did have a desktop during the last year of school. The laptop was showing its years and was beginning to drag in the areas of MATLAB simulations and code compiling. So I used a mixture of VNC (laptop:Linux, server:windows), X (laptop and server Linux), and Remote Desktop (laptop:Win98, server:WinXP) to use my laptop as a terminal to my main computer depending on what OS was running.

You could get a better laptop, but figuring in resale value after two years, you'd spend another thousand+ to get a laptop that will still be two years old when you get out of school. Better to spend $500 for a new desktop, and have two computers to use.

PDA's are not useful until you get a job, where you have rapidly changing schedules and meetings to attend.

A few points

[137]

A few points:

1. tech != learning. Fancy, expensive computers and organizers don't help most people in the lecture hall or seminar room. Lots of folks have gone into why: the imput for paper & pen(cil) is fast and flexible. You can do what works for you, and you can do it fast. Think you can take calculus notes on a laptop? Think again. In a hard class, you don't want to have to wrestle with your input device. The time you spend trying to remember how to work your fancy little widget is time you can't spend drumming Green's Theorem into your head.
2. Laptops get lifted, both in your room and outside of it. At big public universities they will grow legs in five minutes. Where I work and study, laptops get ripped off grad student offices in the time it takes the poor sleep-deprived bastards to get their coffee from the crap machine down the hall. You don't want to see your 17" PowerBook vanish because your roommate didn't lock the door when he went to take a piss. If you're gonna go laptop, be sure your life won't end if it vanishes on you.
3. You are poor. Unless mommy and daddy are spoiling you useless, you don't have tons of money to throw around on cool toys. Go cheap -- if you have to have a laptop, think $1000. If you're going desktop you can get equipped for half that, especially if you do the building yourself. If you're one of those kids whose parents are treat them like a goddamn Emperor, go nuts. Your folks can buy you whatever you want and replace it when you forget to lock your door in your hurry to leave for spring break on your personal Lear jet. For the rest of us, three magic words: second generation hardware.

My computer use has changed a lot while I've been a student. When I was a dirt poor undergrad, I had a desktop machine. As I graduate student (working both a half and a fulltime job, so the money is findable) I find that I like laptops -- I don't have a dorm room on campus to return to, and computer labs are filled with those damn yappy undergrads. I've never wanted an electronic organizer, and I've never had any luck taking notes with anything but pen and paper, whether I was studying calc or body theory. Save your cash for beer. One palm = lots of beer.

I'm with the folks that recommend desktops. They're harder to steal, more powerful for the money, and you can use them as a cornerstone for your stereo/dvd/game console of choice. If you elect to go laptop, go Apple, and for god's sake keep the damn thing with you all the time.

Notes?

[KingAdrock]

What is all of this talk of taking notes? I managed to go through four years of college without taking a single note. I stopped buying the books after Freshman year as well (that $400 a semester goes a long way at the on campus bar with $.50 drafts).

iBook, iPod, iPen, iPad

[Brett Johnson]

12" iBook. Powerful enough for taking notes, writing papers, and writing software. Remember that OS X comes with a full development environment, so if you will be writing software, your set. I usually take notes in class with pen and paper (its quieter and quicker), then type it up afterward to reinforce. Most of the campus has wireless access, so the built-in 802.11b kicks ass. Long battery life usually means I rarely need to plug in. The iBooks seem to be less fragile than the G4 PowerBooks at a fraction of the price. If your dorm room is anything like mine was, there just won't be enough room for a sizable desktop machine ( let alone 2 or 3 - roommates too) unless you get a flat panel display.

20GB iPod. Don't laugh. I listen to tunes walking to/from campus. It's also a very small external firewire drive. If I'm using a lab/classroom with available macs, I can shuttle data back & forth on the iPod. It's much lighter than a laptop, and gets power over firewire, so I don't need to carry a power cable & transformer. I wowed a class as a guest lecturer when I just pulled my iPod out of my pocket, plugged it into the professer's PowerBook, and launched my presentation. It also replaced my Palm Vx, holding contacts and calendar.

Cellular Phone. Cheaper than a landline and statewide or nationwide free long distance packages are a dime-a-dozen.

Pens & Paper. Still a neccessity. Number 2 pencils for filling in those little circles.

PDA - NOT. I have a Palm Vx that sits unused. It had degraded to just holding my contacts. After moving them to my iPod, I found I just stopped carrying the Palm around.

Remember most Universities sell hardware to students at a moderate discount (5-10%), and software at a steep discount (70-90%), so check it out before buying on the open market. Apple also has educational discounts that aren't that great - the Apple discount is usually less than the sales tax you can save by ordering from the right online retailer. Look for bundles that add memory for free. If they offer you a crappy printer bundle, decline and ask for even more memory.

Re:Might sir suggest

[michael_cain]

I'll second this one. I'm going back to school in the fall, and my little black binder (three rings, uses 8.5" by 5.5" paper, pockets inside the covers) will go with me. There are things that a PDA is nice for, but I'll take the binder for real life. Looking at what's in here now, I find:

• Reminder for doctor appointment that came in the mail, including phone numbers if I need to change the appointment.
• Mapquest map and driving directions to interview.
• Advertising brochure of possible interest.
• Four business cards.
• Paper calendar that will go in a file drawer at the end of the year (it's amazing how many times over the years I've needed to look up when something happened on last year's calendar).
• Three receipts from stores.
• List of phone numbers, some going back several years.
• List of problems for the next time the car goes to the shop.
• Notes from doctor visit with kid, copy of prescription.
• Blank paper so I can scribble things down for other people and let them walk away with it.
• Two scraps of paper that other people have scribbled on and I was able to walk away with.
• One blank check.

You can drop it and it doesn't break. There are no batteries to wear out. It's readable under almost all lighting conditions. Data formats are guaranteed to still be readable years from now.

Re:Someone has to say this.... where NERD is from

[fishbowl]

People joke about slide rules, but they do convey certain types of information that calculators do not. For instance, there are all kinds of computations where a slide rule will present intermediate values, whereas a calculator will not, at least not in the same way. Now, this is not to say I'd trade my TI-83 for my K&E slide rule, but I will say there is a difference in how students see tools like logrithms today, than in the pre-calculator period. Logrithms weren't something you learned after algebra; you learned them as a tool to help you do multipication and division. Just an example.

Re:Might sir suggest

[JianTian13]

You know, you might have a point... in larger, lecture hall classes. In the smaller, seminar or discussion-oriented classes that were the hallmark of my upper-division classes, the clickety-clack of a keyboard would have been annoying as hell. I mean, c'mon man, some of those co-eds are distration enough :) Not to imply that you are necessarily a rude person; it's just that I think typing would be acceptable in certain class environments, and not in others.

Re:Save your money.

[CrayzyJ]

Interesting comment. I partly agree with you - it comes down to your roommate selection. My sophomore year I incorrectly chose a friend of mine who was a Spanish major as a roommate. He never had homework and was constantly challenging me to a game of beer. My GPA suffered badly (though I had loads of fun!) From then on out I roomed with other CS majors to help maintain focus.

I found the labs to be much to noisy/busy to work in. Having a room computer, IMHO, was much better.

Re:Save your money.

[Hal-9001]

School machines are the most economical and for the most part the most convenient computing solution, but one thing about college is that everyone tends to have papers or projects due at the same times. When paper or project times roll around, availability of school computers can be a problem. This is the fundamental reason for owning one's own computer--it's always available for you to use when you need it. At large universities, owning your own computer can be a lifesaver.

Lock up your toothbrush, 1970s vs today

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to school before computers but I doubt the list would be very different.

Engineering and Science courses
1. pen and paper because one can't type greek and mathematical symbols by hand.
2. good programmable calculator
This could be a good cheap basic pda with a good calculator. I might love to have a simple pda with a keyboard for typing text only because writing by is tiring(some lectures might be 20pages/hr) and have a pen and paper to augment the pda, or some type of digital pen input. But no way would I want to carry a laptop, books, notebook(paper based), lab book, etc. The extra weight is terrible. I would probably use a pda.

3. I liked the flip flops too, dorm bathrooms aren't very clean.

4. Stereo, now it would be a basic computer with cd music

TVs and movies and video games are a big waste in college dorm rooms. Study hard and Have fun. Hang out with friends, Explore the campus, Sports, Dances, Parties. Talk to professors, think about research. Talk to classmates.

Oh yeah, lock up your toothbrush in your dorm room. You never know what pranks might be pulled and you don't want to know. Yuck.

WhatMeWorry!

Leave it all at home

[igotmybfg]

If you really want to get the most out of your college experience, you'll leave all your gadgets at home. Those commercials you see on television in which people buy new mobile phones and suddenly get beautiful friends - that's a lie. I just finished my first year of college. I have a TI-89, a PDA, a mobile phone (with camera), an mp3 player, a minidisc player, a laptop, and two desktops. Although I am a computer science major, I can truthfully say that most of these gadgets serve one purpose - to annoy me - and have actively played a role in preventing me from socializing with other people, which is a HUGE reason (if not the only reason) to actually go to college instead of staying home and reading textbooks. Are you really going to keep an electronic calendar? If so, do you realize that everytime you have to schedule an 'appointment', you'll be fishing one of the above gadgets out of your rucksack and messing about with it? As for a laptop in the classroom - don't do it! All it does is distract you. The best thing to do is to take a notebook and a pen, and NOTHING else. Trust me on this. Your fellow classmates do NOT want to be interrupted because you forgot to turn your mobile phone off. Besides, anything you take in there, you'll be playing with. You may not believe this, but consider: On a recent day in one of my CS classes, about 30% of the students brought a laptop to class. I casually took a visual survey of what they were doing - only one was actually typing something that looked like notes. The others were surfing the web, chatting on IM (severe affliction - the prime reason NOT to bring a gadget to class), and several were even playing Counterstrike! The electronic classroom is a myth, folks - don't believe the hardware companies when they tell you it's the future. It's not, if you want to learn anything. So, as I've said - if you want to make the most of your college experience, leave the gadgets at home. They aren't worth it.

follow this advice, or regret it in perpetuity

[rneches]

My advice for incoming college freshmen:

Get a laptop. An old laptop. Install the weirdest OS you can find that has a networking stack. Make sure you have a couple of battaries that hold a charge so you can take it to the library, coffee shop or lobby while your roommate is busy contracting and spreading chlamydia, or whatever STD is popular on your campus.

Here's the reasoning: you want to make sure that you cannot play games on your computer. You know as well as I do that if you can play games, you will. Intead of doing your homework. I know whole Counter Strike clans that failed out of expensive private universty educations. You must avoid this fate at all costs.

Sound lame? Yeah, it is. But think of it this way. You (or your parents, or the government) is/are paying tens of thousands dollars a year to send you to a place where you can aquire an education. It's very likely that this is the only shot you're going to get, and that if you screw up bad enough, you've got a rewarding carrear in burger flipping.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't have fun; on the contrary, you should have as much fun as you can. But, keep in mind that you are packed into a tiny, grubby place with thousands of other people your age, some of whom are worth getting to know. Keep in mind that there are proffesors and staff who've dedicated their lives to educating punks like you. Keep in mind that there is probably an interesting city or town to explore. Keep in mind that there is probably a gym that's flat-out better than any fitness company you could find that you can just use, for free. And you're probably miserably out of shape. Keep in mind that there is probably a world-class library crammed with books you should have already read by now. Exploit all of these things to the maximum extent permitted by hours in the day and callories in your diet, and maybe you'll get your money's worth.

As much as I like video games, they are mutually exclusive with these goals.

So, get an old laptop. Resist the urge to splurge on anything more ostentatious than a Pentium II 500. Your friends will laugh at it. Tell them you're poor, and that they should fuck off. Instead of playing games, amuse yourself with your creaky old hardware by hacking cool software. Or whatever you like, so long as you're creating something. You don't need fancy-pants graphics to run vim, screen, ssh, gcc, mutt, LaTeX and xterm. You might need a little more oomph for javac, or mzscheme, perl, or the like if your classes need 'em. Gaim, naim, or ICQ if it improves your social life. xmms, but don't go nuts on the P2P networks. It's a waste of your time. If your roommate wants to waste their time, mooch of of him or her.

Trust me. If you think you need anything else, you need to re-evaluate your goals.

Hints from a 10th Year Student

[cjsnell]

Hint #1: Don't waste your money on a laptop. Spend your money on a good desktop and a high-quality monitor.

Hint #2: Resist the (strong) temptation to install computer games. During my freshman year at Vanderbilt [vanderbilt.edu], something like 1/5th of the guys on my dorm did not return for their sophomore year due to bad grades. Nearly every one of these guys (and I was one of them) spent hours a day screwing off on pointless games like SimFarm and Quake and this was back before dorm rooms were networked.

Hint #3: If it's crap, don't bring it to college with you. You'll find that certain dorm rooms tend to be centers of social life. If you want your friends to hang out in yours, make it sophisticated and tasteful. If you can fit it in your room, buy a couch and some cool lighting. My RA built a really cool elevated bunkbed thing above his couch and it held a 40 gallon freshwater aquarium at one end. It was sweet. Invest in a good stereo and TV if you can afford it.

Hint #4: Drink with your friends but not to extreme excess. Stay away from drugs. You'll probably regret your choice someday if you choose to use them.

have fun and work hard.

Re:follow this advice, or regret it in perpetuity

[m3000]

Or just use some self control and only play games on weekend nights. I mean, what else are you supposed to do on a Friday night at college other than play CS over the dorm LAN? And CS does run a PII 450 w/ a 16 MB TNT card. Ohhh yeah, 5 years old but it's still kicking.

If you want to warn against something, make it AIM. My god that has sucked hours upon hours of time from me, and it's the world's greatest procrastination aid when you're trying to write a paper and you keep wondering if someone's away message has changed. So you compulsivly check all 60 away messages every 5 minutes. Yeah....

Reliability Problems

[mholt108]

I am about to start a medicine degree and i ablsolutely agree withyou that you dont want games. Problem is that anything old enough to limit games is also going to be (in laptop years) too old to be reliable. My Toshiba celeron 300 would be my first choice - if it still worked!!

I figure that an Ibook with a 3 year extended warantee is my best bet as it is small and not too fast, and runs MACOSX which is not a game friendly as windows.

If you have any other reliable options i would love to hear them.
m

Re:follow this advice, or regret it in perpetuity

[iocat]

This is great advice. While I miss the many cool videogames I didn't get to play at college, due to lack of a TV,ownership of a Mac, etc., I think that what I got in experience drinking, talking to girls, developing social skills that didn't involve posting on a BBS (I went to college a while ago -- 89 - 93), more than made up for the lack of a constant high bandwidth stream of games.

It was easy to get back into games once I graduated, and even a shitty computer can play some games, but it's less likely that you'll get so addicted that you'll drop out.

By the way, if you go to a pricey private school, do a break down on how much each class costs per period. Chances are it's more than $1 a MINUTE for in class time. So, ditching a class probably blows like $50. Consider that when you're trying to decide whether or not to watch Oprah or go to Biology -- it makes fucking off seem a lot less appealing! -Chris

None at all

[Greg_D]

You don't need a computer at college. They provide them for you. Using the ones at the school will make you less sedentary, less likely to mess around with things other than your assignments, and manage your time better.

Seriously, try it for a year while leaving your PC at home. Involve yourself with clubs, social activity, and extra studying in your spare time. Make enough friends and involve yourself in enough activities and the computer becomes nothing more than a tool to be used for assignments.

Re:follow this advice, or regret it in perpetuity

[seri goo]

Ever tried nethack or Angband-proof a computer? It's darn impossible it is, it'll run on anything!

Re:Might sir suggest

[anon*127.0.0.1]

Actually, I didn't even bother with binders. My secret requires reading the text before attending class. Better yet, read it twice. Go to class with a couple of highlighters and a couple of pencils.

Pay attention while Prof lectures, instead of blindly copying down everything verbatim. If he seems to be spending an inordinate amount of time on a particular part of the text, whip out your handy highlighter and mark the appropriate part of the text.

If he covers something that's not in the book... well, every college text I ever saw has acres of white space. Fat margins, lots of space at the top and bottom of each page, tons of useless illustrations.... just find a spot that seems appropriate and make your notes right in the textbook.

Advantages: More time spent in class listening and learning, instead of blindly taking notes. When it's time to study for exams, all your study materials are in one place, hopefully well organized.

Disadvantages: You've got to read the text beforehand so that you know whats in the book and what isn't. For this reason, probably 98% of students won't be able to use this method.

Re:follow this advice, or regret it in perpetuity

[Ryan Amos]

I really couldn't put this any better myself. Get the fuck out of the dorm room and go have some FUN, this is the best opportunity in your life to make friends, find a hobby you like, something. I rarely play computer games anymore. Console games are generally okay because those can be a hell of a lot of fun with friends, and most college guys, geeks or not, have a PS2 or an XBox (sports games are HUGE in college.) People in real life are way more interesting and enriching to your life than some dork you met on the internet playing UT2k3.

This is why an iBook is a perfect college laptop. It runs a very pretty, very advanced OS that has all the unix stuff you'll need for class coupled with a great development environment all ready to go. And Mac OS X doesn't run that many new, hot games. Not to mention the fact that you look way cooler sitting in a coffee shop playing on an iBook or PowerBook than you do with some boring old Thinkpad.

I spent my first year of college trying to be the perfect geek and I was miserable. One of the problems with CS is the misconception that people have that if you want to work in the tech industry, you need a CS degree. The reality is that if you want to program, you need a CS degree, anything else, well, any degree will do and job experience is more important anyway. I hate programming, but I'll probably work with computers once I get out of college and I'm a philosophy major now.

CS is a whole lot of work for a boring desk job when you get out (that doesn't even pay very well anymore) and it'll eat up your social time in a big way. And yes, social time IS important, a good network of friends and social outlets is as important to living a happy life as doing well in school, if not moreso. Just remember you can still get a good job in the computer industry even if you're not a CS major. Being happy is the most important thing, and if you'd be happier as an auto mechanic than a programmer, be an auto mechanic.

Get Real

[Anonymous Coward]

In some utopia, you can run whatever minimalist software you want on whatever ancient hardware you want.

In the real world, you have professors that mail you MS Word docs and Excel files, refusing to put them in a standard format. You have Java programming classes that require you to have a machine with the latest GUI browser and SDK. You have your Game Engines class. You might even have genetic algorithm projects that take long enough as it is on that 2 GHz. If I were a graphic design student, they would laugh at anyone that couldn't run the latest version of Photoshop -- for which you better have at least a half-gig of RAM to do anything serious.

As much as I want to agree that students should do whatever prevents them from being slacking, fucking, beer-chuggin frat wastes, there's a line between what is wishful thinking and what is really doable. Believe me, I tried long and hard to get my professors to tone it down on the software and hardware requirements. It's a phenomena known as "tyranny of the majority": it's just not practical for an entire department to switch its methods for one person.

And really, not everyone is a CS major. And really, some people think they will be, but end up in chemical engineering or public relations instead. Common sense says get something versatile, and then learn a little self-discipline -- something it seems is in short supply these days. If you think it's hard to stop yourself from gaming, I have a few other things for you to think about. Like how you are going to get your class NWN mod to run on that PII 500. Or how you are going to log in and register for classes and online exams with systems that require the latest version of IE. Or how you are going to perform those app-specific competencies on Linux.

I'd consider the middle path, if I were you. A poor laptop may help your work in the self-discipline area, but you'll make up the work in compensating for what people expect you to be able to run. And I thought we got rid of the self-flagellation with the end of Puritanism...