<p>The laptop I'm about to get is very portable and only a 12.1'' screen. I don't really play too many games, however I'm wondering if I should also bring a desktop to college. To burn games, music, dvds, watch tv on, and trade my stocks. Should I bring my desktop with me too?</p>
<p>If I were you I'd buy a very cheap laptop off of ebay (you can get great deals on old thin and light Thinkpads) and bring a desktop as well. It should end up being considerably cheaper.
Space is of course an issue however.</p>
<p>I have a friend who took two laptops to school. One is the 17" HP he bought with his graduation money. He gets awful battery life (like 1.5 hours) mostly because there's a Pentium 4 in it. He only uses it on his desk, and that is for stuff like movies, graphics, etc. This would be the equivalent of your desktop. He treats it like one.</p>
<p>On the go, he uses this old IBM or Compaq (don't remember which) that runs Windows 98, I think he said it's about 7-8 years old. A friend of his dad gave it to him, as he was going to just give it to the Goodwill. He bought a new battery for less than $100 and was good to go. It gets 3-3.5 hours and he uses it mostly just for word processing and spreadsheets.</p>
<p>The desktop wouldn't cost any money since I'd just use the one I have here at home. Even if I take it, my parents can still use the old 98se computer we have. My room is a super double, 18x16, so I woudn't say size should be too much of an issue.</p>
<p>You probably won't use both a lot, usually people will bring both and abandon one or the other (though it splits fairly evenly among which they prefer)...may as well bring both and then bring the less-used computer home at thanksgiving (or ship it) if it's taking up more space than it's worth.</p>