<p>Does USC have any programs wherein a student can purchase a Laptop through the school (to achieve a school discount). </p>
<p>My nephew, who attends a UC campus, purchased a Dell laptop, and received some discount due to his enrollment at the UC campus. </p>
<p>We plan to purchase a Laptop for my son for when he goes to college. It would be helpful to know ahead of time, before I go shopping online via vendor sites (Dell, HP, Apple, etc.), if the school offers a discount.</p>
<p>At this point, we are just doing research. He has been accepted at USC. However, we won't know for certain that he will say "yes" to USC, until we receive his Financial Aid package (sometime between now, and the end of the first week of April).</p>
<p>Yes there is a program where you can purchase a laptop through the school. I think if you go to the web site for the bookstore you should be able to find all the details. As for vendors, I believe they are Apple and Dell. You can get the same Apple student discount through any Apple store by showing proof of enrollment in school, that's how I bought my computer because I come from a state with no sales tax.</p>
<p>usually the discounts come from the company themselves, so they're the same for all universities. Also you can probably buy online as long as you send proof of enrollment also.</p>
<p>For apple the discounts are about as good as you will ever get from apple, for dell it's worth looking at what specials and coupon deals they have which can sometimes be less for just a small change in the hardware.</p>
<p>I heard the discounts can vary. My friend told me he used someone's UCLA discount to buy a Powerbook because it ended up being a higher discount than USC...</p>
<p>no, they're all the same prices from apple. It's possible I suppose that the on-campus ucla apple store offered some special deal to clear inventory, but I doubt it. Apples pretty much cost the same everywhere. Definitely it is always the same price online.</p>
<p>Even better than the discounts at my daughter's school (where they sell Dells at the bookstore) is <a href="http://www.techbargains.com%5B/url%5D">www.techbargains.com</a>. Dell runs many specials and packages, usually for a short time. That site tracks them and gives you the coupon code. Decide which one you want and then sign up for e-mail notifications on Dell sales packages for that laptop or computer.</p>
<p>Last year I started tracking the Dell packages in May and got one in June with better specs, HD, CPU and RAM, for several hundred less than what they were offering at her school. Of course, the college bookstore touted their onsite service etc., but with the money saved I was still able to pay less and get the 3 year on site service plan directly from Dell. (Which by the way we just used. Our 90 lb dog attacked the laptop and totally destroyed it while she was home on Spring Break. Dell dispatched a technician the next day to replace the screen and keyboard. When that wasn't enough, they sent a guy the next day with a new motherboard. Fixed it, and then I popped in her hard drive and voila, just like new.</p>
<p>Actually, come to think of it, it pretty much ~was~ new.</p>
<p>Also, while on the subject, consider getting a lost articles policy or rider to your homeowner insurance to cover loss or theft. State Farm gave me one for $35 for the year.</p>
<p>yeah i used the dell discount
wait for a good sale get email alerts and then you'll get an extra 12% off which covers the tax and shipping and what not.
it's possible to get like 30% off plus X amount of money off your computer
i have a dell 700m that was worth about 2k+
and i got it for a little under 1300</p>
<p>let's see
1.67 Ghz pentium M
512 MB memory
no dvd drive ( i never saw the purpose to get a dvd burner)
the extended battery 4-5 hours of battery time
that's something i highly recommend for multiple lectures in one day. and t charges up pretty quickly</p>
<p>hmm for the programs that you would need more ram for. i recommend looking to see how much room is left to upgrade so you can go to an electronics store and buy the upgrade, sometimes it's cheaper, sometimes it's not just check.</p>
<p>i use a lot of pdf files no special programs,
512 is fine for internet, word, powerpoint. etc</p>