Top 15 Gadgets for College Students

College Life
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<p>Organization, productivity, and access to the right tools will ensure success with academics as well as social events. With that in mind I have compiled a list, both from personal experience and a little bit of research, on a list of gadgets which will make your college experience smoother and more enjoyable. Bear in mind that not all of the gadgets listed here will be necessary for everyone, but they were all worth listing, in my opinion.</p>

<p>Flash drive – This is in my opinion one of the greatest technological inventions a student could ever invest in. Buy the largest size your budget can afford, no matter what kind of student you are. You never know when you will need to save a quick document, get some mp3s from your friend, get a copy of the pictures from last nights party, backup your “My Documents” folder (just in case), share your videos, save your presentation, and keep a backup of the document you are about to turn in, just in case you spill coffee on your paper copy. =)</p>

<p>Laptop – People may argue that you don’t need a laptop, with computer labs and all, but I will tell you that they are very convenient. Not just for school related things, but lets not underestimate the torture of a boring, monotonous professor. Having your laptop while sitting in class not only benefits you more than skipping, but also distracts you from how horrible some of your teachers could be. Plus, chances are, though you try not to listen, some of the lecture will actually get through to your brain.</p>

<p>Digital ‘Point and shoot’ Camera – A picture speaks a thousand words. If college is to be a great experience, who wouldn’t want to capture a few memories for nostalgic sake. Plus, if you take pictures in lab classes, it makes for better studying.</p>

<p>Printer – with ink-jet printers as cheap as they are, we should all have one. I know you can print in most computer labs, and you should, since most universities add those fees into your tuition anyways, but sometimes you will be in a hurry, or will need to print something and won’t want to go to school just to get it. For those times, that $40ish printer will come in very handy.</p>

<p>Ipod Alarm Clock (or mp3 equivalent) – One of the worst parts of school is waking up early. The most annoying sound I can think of is my old alarm clock buzzer. It is absolutely excruciating. The best way I have found to cure the buzzer blues is with an Ipod alarm clock. When you find the perfect song to wake up to, the one that starts off soft and then gets just loud enough to wake you up, well it doesn’t get much better than that.
External Hard Drive – With USB hard drives becoming cheaper and cheaper, you’d be hard pressed to convince me that you shouldn’t have one. We’ve all experienced the time when our hard drive failed, or our computer crashed and we lost that really important document we were working on, or worse, all of our documents. Backing up all of your important data on an external hard drive is a great way to ensure computer crashes and hard drive failures don’t get the best of you.</p>

<p>Webcam – Now this isn’t exactly necessary, but since you can get them for 20 bucks or so I went ahead and added it. For all of you who left home for a university far away from mom and dad, and maybe even left a boy/girlfriend behind, video conferencing is a great way to keep in touch. It makes instant messaging that much more fun.</p>

<p>Voice recorder (or iTalk) – Now I don’t have one personally, but for those who have an audible memory, listening to your lecturer over and over will be far superior to studying those hand written notes. Plus its fun to record your friends when they don’t know, like a secret agent! The iTalk is an add-on for iPods that allow them to record sound.</p>

<p>Graphing Calculator – Now I don’t advocate cheating, but I know of people who have programmed every function they ever needed into Texas Instruments calculators and made it through college algebra and even calculus without ever needing to memorize anything. Besides that, you will almost definitely need it for any upper level math course.</p>

<p>USB TV Tuner – If you have a decent desktop computer or laptop, and live in a dorm (where free space is more valuable than gold) this little piece of magic could save you a lot of space. It plugs into your computer just like a flash drive, can connect to an antenna or digital cable signal, and displays the video on your computer monitor. Also, you can used the bundled software and record video, like a DVR or TIVO. Plus they usually come with a remote, so you still don’t have to get off your butt to change the channel. =)</p>

<p>Radar Detector – College kids can’t afford tickets. Case and point…</p>

<p>Pocket PC – If you are the technically savvy type, this could very well become your best friend. I have a PocketPC phone, and I use it for just about everything. Microsoft word and powerpoint, making lists, browsing the internet, google maps, playing poker and tetris, listening to music and watching video, dictionaries, medical dictionaries, drawing on paint when I get bored, syncing appointments with my computer, and so much more.</p>

<p>MP3 Player – My MP3 player is one of my favorite possessions. It motivates me during workouts, wakes me up to great music, and has changed the way I learn. Since I got my mp3 player I have listened to more than 10 audiobooks (less than 4 weeks ago). Also podcasts make it easy to learn just about any subject you are interested in for free. Can’t argue with that…</p>

<p>Surge Protectors – Want a broken computer? Me neither. Invest in them.</p>

<p>Blank CDs/DVDs – Honestly since the spread of high capacity flash drives, I rarely burn cds and dvds, but I still think they are good to have. I backup music on dvds, burn videos for friends, and as soon as I am finished recording my own music, I will burn it to cds also. Plus they are crazy cheap now.</p>

<p>Smartphone – Very useful. See PocketPC above.</p>

<p>for more great college life information check out Zen</a> College Life</p>

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<p>Someone forgot to put a TV and Rock Band on their list =P</p>

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<p>Perhaps a multi tool as well like a leatherman wave. That will come in handy.</p>

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Nope. You will most likely never use a graphing calculator again after Calculus if your college allows you to use one in the first place. Mine doesn’t. All we are allowed to use on tests are non-programmable scientific calculators.</p>

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<p>non-programmable scientific calculators in Calc, Calc II, III and diffEQ? Something doesn’t sound right here! I remember for my gen. chem2 we could use the graphing calculators as long as we showed the professor our calculator and that we didn’t have any programs on it. </p>

<p>I prefer graphing calculators because I do all of my problems in multiple steps and it helps keep me organized. You give me a scientific calcultor and i’ll go nuts.</p>

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<p>Our calc classes don’t have a lot of graphing assignments because we are supposed to learn how to do stuff without graphing it. Old school, you know. The scientific calculators are actually not necessary at all; they are just meant as an aid for arithmetic. For the few graphing/programming assignments we do have, we are using Mathematica.</p>

<p>And how the heck are you using a graphing calculator in Calc III (multivariable I assume)? Are there fancy new calculators that graph functions in more than two dimensions?</p>

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<p>lol @ graphing calculator for upper level math course. Calculators aren’t allowed in any math course. Although I guess it would help for assignments, but upper level math courses have little calculation and are mostly abstract/general.</p>

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<p>i like my ti-89 :smiley: And yes, I’m a biochem major, not a math major. I take Calc III because its a pre-req for p-chem.</p>

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<p>Yeah, I feel like a graphing calculator might not have been that much help for a math major. But I was a science major, and it was endlessly helpful.</p>

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<p>I have to disagree with the alarm clock. I use a couple (yes I normally set two) of ringtones on my phone that are ANNOYING. I found when I used a ringtone that I liked I slept right through it.</p>

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<p>My sleep is terrible anyways, so I wake up to a phone easily, but an alarm clock gets me out of bed better because a cell phone is much easier to turn off.</p>

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<p>wait, you were allowed calculators? we are only allowed to use a 4 function. one time my physics professor put sin 25 on a test and so i was sitting there doing trig for like 20 minutes.</p>

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<p>I’ve been allowed to use any calculator I wanted in engineering, statistics, physics, chemistry and one upper level math class. Certainly worth it if only for homework.</p>

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<p>i have one of those old-fashioned alarm clocks with two bells that ring when it goes off..people have in the past mistaken it for a fire alarm, but it’s pretty much the only thing that does the job..</p>

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<p>You might want to check the laws of the state where you go to school. Radar detectors are illegal in some places. I totally sympathize about speeding tickets. Even good drivers sometimes stop watching the speedometer and there is inevitably a police car ahead. It’s lame but someone’s got to pay to fix the highways.</p>

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<p>I was often allowed to use graphing calculators on my engineering tests, but the questions were usually of the type that they were useless. Being able to graph something isn’t going to help you much when you’ve gotta be deriving equations.</p>

<p>Was never allowed to use calculators in any of my math classes (calc 3d, diff eq., statistics, complex analysis, partial differential equations). For the complex analysis and PDE classes we were occasionally expected to use Mathematica, but for a lot of problems it didn’t do much.</p>

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<p>not to mention that 1) half of college kids can’t / don’t have a car on campus, and 2) the radar detector probably costs as much as two speeding tickets…so unless you have a terrible case of lead foot it’s not worth the investment</p>

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<p>You can get this list down to less than 10 by getting an iPhone :)</p>

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<p>I disagree with about half of these, but the other half are useful.</p>

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<p>That way if you break one, you break them all ;)</p>

<p>I just bought a Dell pocket PC off of ebay. :)</p>