<p>Your daughter will be far better off getting a tech savvy friend to teach her some basic stuff than getting some random guy who probably doesn’t have that great of qualifications (looking at Geek Squad from Best Buy here…) to do it. </p>
<p>Some colleges do offer free spyware/malware/virus protection. ie, Penn offers I believe a free enterprise version of some symantec (not sure about comp name) product.</p>
<p>Questbest…a speech pathology major just needs a regular computer…nothing fancy. You should have your daughter check the Penn State website for their minimum configuration requirements…every school has those. Then get whatever you want to get that meets those requirements. Either a Mac or PC platform will work. Just get what you want and can afford. Prices are all over the map.</p>
<p>Gotta ask…what happened to Ithaca and UDel?</p>
<p>Got my D an Hp laptop from Best Buy, she loves it and it wasn’t too terribly expensive either. You just gotta look around and talk to the people that are working in the computer department. I agree that Macs are great computers however that just wasn’t in our budget. Best Buy does have what they call Geek Squad and they can come to your home and set up your computer or just answer any questions you have.</p>
<p>Get whatever kind of computer the university reccommends/sell through the bookstore.
You don’t have to buy if from them but if you get the same brand then your D will be able to get assistance through the university IT help desk.</p>
<p>Both our kids have Lenovo laptops. They have held up very well throughout college.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I believe that’s called an iPhone 4.</p>
<p>Sorry, couldn’t help myself.</p>
<p>Toshiba or Sony.</p>
<p>I have an HP that I got through my school, I really liked it all school year but have been having some major problems this summer. I had to get the motherboard and the hard drive replaced at the beginning of the summer, and now it’s broken/won’t start up again. So I probably wouldn’t recommend an HP, but I’d look and see if her school recommends a brand/offers it a discount.</p>
<p>Find out what the school’s repair policy is before deciding to buy on campus or buy off campus. At my college, the computer store would not touch a computer that was not purchased at the store, they would not even discuss the problem with a student to try to reach a diagnosis of whether it needed repair or not. And they definitely would not accept a computer for repair that was not purchased there. If she’s going to school in a small town, it can be hard to access the nearest computer repair place in a hurry (especially if she doesn’t have car), so I really think that should factor heavily into a decision regarding what kind of computer she gets, perhaps even higher than price. If she’s not going to get a Mac, then she’s going to at some point need some kind of servicing or computer repair during her college career, and the easier and faster she can do that, the happier she will be. </p>
<p>Also, buy her a portable external hard drive with lots of disk space and impress, impress, impress the importance of backing up her files, especially her school work, regularly. Almost all of my friends have had experiences in college where thier hard drive or motherboard fails and they have to have a replacement and they lose all of the data that was on it before. It’s common, and data retrieval is very expensive and time consuming, usually not considered worth it. So back things up.</p>
<p>Get a dell! Those are the best laptops imo xD. Stay away from HP laptops. Those are the worst kind! If you go to Dell website you can customize it…mine is pink!</p>
<p>I would chose whatever her school recommends, but I have had few problems with Dell laptops. They seem to work fine for me, so I guess that is what I would recommend. Granted viruses can be a problem, but, with a good anti-virus (I would not recommend a free one, as another user said), she should be fine.</p>
<p>D1 just graduated this spring and she had the same Dell all 4 yrs. We did have their 4 yr warranty/insurance program that she used when the sound card went. A tech scheduled an appointment at her convenience and came to her dorm and fixed it. She ws thrilled! We just did the same with D2 and she finished her first year with no prolems. I agree about the antivirus software…keep it up to date! Both of their schools offered free Norton or McAfee for them but they have to remember to shut down their computers once in a while to get the updated installed when they are sitting in their tray!</p>
<p>Both are business majors and were encouraged not to have Macs.</p>
<p>Perhaps not Dell:<a href=“In Suit Over Faulty Computers, Window to Dell’s Fall - The New York Times”>In Suit Over Faulty Computers, Window to Dell’s Fall - The New York Times;
<p>See what the school recommends. It’s useful to have a computer that a lot of other people have in case the power adaptor fails/ goes missing. For instance I learned this past year that hp has at least two different (incompatible) power adaptors. </p>
<p>I would say laptops with 12 to 14 inch screens are a good “sweet spot,” between power, portability, and battery life. Netbooks are nice and portable, but generally don’t have DVD players. It’s nice to watch movies on a 17 inch computer screen, but those size notebooks don’t fit on itty-bitty lecture hall desks very well. A built in web cam is nice too…</p>
<p>I would highly recommend going with the choices her campus bookstore services and sells. There prices are going to be the best. My son is going to let go of his Sony kicking and screaming next year, but when you have a project due and your computer goes belly up, do you want to drop it with your friendly techno-geek at the bookstore and pickup a loaner OR do you want to waste three hours useing up your parents celphone minutes trying to get through to customer service because the computer you just had to have wasn’t one the school serviced???
I have my favorites, believe me. All options will go OFF the table except the ones his school services.</p>
<p>wrong forum i know ! . does anyone know a cheap data recovery company
that offers discount to students ??? ?</p>
<p>I would suggest a toshiba… If she doesn’t use cds (chances are she doesn’t) they have a model with a 13 inch screen and no cd/dvd player but is less then 4 lbs and has a 9 hr battery life… perfect for college. Probably about 600 or so for that.</p>
<p>dell has historically performed much worse then their competitors as far as laptops go.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf[/url]”>http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf</a></p>
<p>artist:</p>
<p>Check with the bookstore at your school assuming they sell computers. They may be able to refer you to a local data recovery service. However, you should really think through your plan B at this point because there’s a good chance there won’t be a recovery (depending on what the problem was). If you just deleted some files they might have a reasonable shot at recovery if you haven’t done too much with the computer since then. If you had a hard drive crash there’s a poor chance the data will be recovered. </p>
<p>Backups - backups - backups!</p>
<p>Does your school have a “geek squad” to help everyone with their computers and web access? They might be able to help. Good luck.</p>
<p>artist just a tip for “after the emergency” I tell my kids to e-mail themselves every paper. That way it is in their campus e-mail box and totally recoverable if the computer crashes. Flash drives are handy but all too easy to loose. S1 one has gone through four or five of those things over the past couple years. E-mailing yourself your work is a pretty safe “instant backup” if you don’t have any alternative.</p>
<p>
can’t agree with that advice.</p>
<p>About four years ago, my home Dell running Windows 95 was so messed up with viruses (I had let the 90 day free subscription to Norton lapse for about a year) that I called Dell support. After a few hit/miss suggestions, the support 2nd level suggested I install a free anti-virus software called Stopzilla. Haven’t had a single virus problem in four years and I have it on all four Windows based computers in the household. I run the software about once a month… should do weekly but I forget. It’s FREE. A second free program for viruses imbedded in documents is called AVG. They too have a free version that has worked perfectly for me for over four years.</p>
<p>If you end up with a MAC they are not nearly as susceptible to viruses as I think they continously update their computers with updates to prevent them.</p>
<p>I got the HP Espresso and it’s great: reliable, powerful, portable, looks good, affordable, and NOT a Mac!
I’d go with the NOD3 Antivirus. It’s alot better than Norton and McAfee combined, I think. Also GET AN EXTERNAL HARDDRIVE TO BACK UP FILES. You (or she) will be glad if you do when the time comes.</p>