<p>I'm probably going to major in Biology in college and have no idea what features I should be looking for when buying a laptop. My budget is under $1000. Should I pick one that has faster speeds? or a long battery life? Any kind of comments are welcomed. Thanks!</p>
<p>It really doesn’t matter. Go with whatever you personally want and it’ll probably be more than capable of running any software you need.</p>
<p>Well, think about what you’ll be using it for. Will you take it around to all your classes? Do you know what your schedule is like - specifically, whether your classes are blocked together or spread out during the day? If you’ll be out of your room for 3+ hours at a time, a long battery life will be really useful. Also, if you’re just going to be using your laptop for the Internet, word processing, etc. (but not gaming or anything), speed shouldn’t bee much of an issue. You should have no problem finding a good laptop for under $1000.</p>
<p>August issue of Money magazine just had an article about laptops for college. They give a few guidelines and recommend three. 1. “for liberal arts majors” Dell Latitude E6400; $997
2.“for engineering majors” Lenovo Thinkpad T400;$297 3. “for art/design majors” Apple Macbook Pro;$1849.
The article gives the reasons for each one they suggest. Good Luck!</p>
<p>'2.“for engineering majors” Lenovo Thinkpad T400;$297 '</p>
<p>Something about this price just doesn’t seem right.</p>
<p>oops, that should read $1297.</p>
<p>Here are some basic, very general, not personalized at all guidelines.</p>
<p>Screen size: Almost everyone agrees 13-14" is best.</p>
<p>Processor: As long as it’s over 1.8GHz and dual-core, you should be fine. Intel or AMD.</p>
<p>Graphics card: Play games? Look for ATi and nVidia high end graphics cards. Don’t play games? Don’t worry about it then.</p>
<p>Hard drive: Don’t have a lot of movies, pictures and music? Any size. Do have a lot of movies, pictures and music? 200GB minimum.</p>
<p>Battery: Most college campuses I visited are very “wired”, so you shouldn’t worry about it because you’ll have somewhere to plug in, in almost every room.</p>