<p>How prevalent are laptops in the classroom? I was wondering whether I should buy one for college.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>It depends on the class. </p>
<p>In my engineering classes everyone has one every time we meet, Chem lecture has a handful of folks that bring them, but nobody in my other classes ever bring one.</p>
<p>Yeah, rarely did I see anyone with a laptop. I remember only one person out of about 150 in a huge Geology class had one; he would surf the web sometimes, hahaha. I could see because we had the theater type of seating.</p>
<p>But it depends on your major, I think. It was always easier for me just to take notes on paper....laptops seemed just like an extra weight added on that wasn't always necessary.</p>
<p>I'm sure in some majors they are, though.</p>
<p>About 30% take them to class. I'd advise you to get one though. I upgraded my Sony vaio desktop and bought a brand new 19" LCD monitor thinking that power>portability. </p>
<p>After just 1 semester Im regretting it. Macbooks and the new Dell Latitudes are packing a punch power wise these days, and are still portable. Im looking into ordering a macbook pro through my university. Even though the price is steep, its an investment that will like have me set my entire time at school. Plus, doing my work/surfing for fun at a coffee shop or out in the quad when the weather is nice will be the hell out of being couped up in my dorm room.</p>
<p>That said though, dont do it if its going to break the bank for you. Your school likely will have a good computing center, and cheap Emachines rig that is adequate for internet and word processing will get you by.</p>
<p>What granted said is very true too. Im a business major, and all my profs put the lecture jotes on powerpoint slides before class. When theyre talking about the slides, its much easier for me to just pull them up on my laptop and type notes about what theyre saying than to print the slides off, write notes, then keep a huge binder of printed notes.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot guys, I'm considering majoring in biology (pre-med) and maybe marketing management.</p>
<p>In my limited experience, they are very rare except in programming classes.</p>
<p>^ really? It seems now that T1 wireless is standard on college campuses and powerful laptops are < $2000, the userbase is expanding by a ton.</p>
<p>At my school, a few people per class generally bring them. Maybe 25% at most. I would strongly suggest it though. All entering students at my school are required to have a laptop starting with the class of 2010.</p>
<p>I usually see about 1 or 2 out of every 50 in a normal lecture class with a laptop. My freshman year roommate was a computer science major and she took her laptop with her to class all the time, but when I took the same computer science classes the next year, I never saw anyone using a laptop in class, so she must have been the only one. If I had to guess I'd say maybe 40-50% of the students own a laptop (everyone's required to have some kind of a computer), but 5-10% of them carry them around regularly.</p>
<p>I have one and I don't actually take it to class unless I'm doing a presentation or something, but I don't like sitting at a desk to work so I move it all around my apartment.</p>
<p>I actually use my laptop all the time in class and have been able to take very detailed notes when my professors were lecturing. (Their exams were based on lectures, with one or two questions coming from the readings). I also found out that I type a lot faster than writing by hand.</p>
<p>I'm a bio major who's pre-med, and I just started taking my laptop to class this past semester, and I'm going to continue. At my school, most of the science departments have adopted PowerPoint big time, and a lot of professors put the notes up before class begins. Then, it's really nice to be able to type my notes directly on the slides. I can also type faster than I can write by hand, and so my notes are more in depth (which can be a burden and a blessing when studying for tests).</p>