Choosing the right laptop for Back to School

It’s that time again, the moment every student has

been waiting for. The Back to School time where
students hunts everything that can ease their life
through the year or even more, but not every
components and needs is cheap right now and one of
them is a laptop that is very essential in the current
era. Every teacher teaches in digital form, all textbooks are in e-book form, and all students
takes note conveniently in their own gadgets. Therefore, the question that comes into our mind
what kind of laptop that we should buy, considering it is relatively expensive for students, and if
we buy it recklessly we could end up suffering for the rest of the year stuck using a laptop that
is not suitable for our majors or studies.

So, I am going to give several parameters on buying a laptop that can help you clear
your doubts and dilemma on buying a laptop, here are some of my thoughts,

1. Ask yourself what kind of studies you are going to take

Most of the time people are consumed by the rhetoric’s that better specification on a laptop is
a must for example people would rather buy core i7 processor compare to core i5 processor or
even m processor even though they are taking major such as International Relation that does
not demand high specification to run certain software unlike computer science student. The
reason why this is practically important is because the price gap can be high. For example,
usually core i5 laptops can only cost you around 7 to 8 million rupiah while core i7 laptops can
cost you around 11 million at the cheapest. 3 to 4 million price gaps is really impactful
especially when you are a student that are living in a dorm, you can use that amount of money
to buy books and many other things. So, my tips is to ask yourself what kind of major are you
taking, for example, if you are in a design major you will be working with photo and video
editing software that demands a lot of memory therefore you should buy laptop with high
memory and decent processor to prevents long duration of rendering or even lag when you are
in editing session, therefore when you come to the shop you can already narrow down the
product to the list of specification that you need.

2. Set your budget limit

We are always swayed and bribed by the luxurious brand regardless of their price, but
sometimes this is not a good strategy especially if we are on a tight budget. Therefore, after
determining on the specification of what you need, look directly towards the laptop that
matches the specification and your budget, sometimes branding is just an image to climb up the
social ladder. There are many other unpopular brands but have a good performance

3. Look for a brand that have a good customer support

Everyone cares about their stuff, especially expensive stuff but sometimes accident can’t be
avoided and our stuff breaks, this is where customer support comes in, because you need a
responsive customer service that can solve your problem in a blink of your eye without any
confusing methods or ways. This is important because as a student you are in a constant need
of your laptop to get you job done, so having a fast reparation and resolution does matter to
achieve higher score and ease your life in the school, furthermore sometimes brand that does
not have a good customer support might refuse to fix your broken product so, you will ends up
in a situation where you need to spend more money in getting a replacement for your laptop so
good customer support does a significant job towards your money.

4. Research and read reviews

Sometimes on paper specification does not reflects everything inside your laptop, how does it
perform, what is the thermal conditions and many other things. Because hardware does work
together with software, so you need to read and research more on how the software optimizes
with the hardware, because battery life is very important for college students and that is only
something that you can find through objective review from external actors, because all those
on paper specification might just be for marketing purposes or even the prototype so it might
be different with the retail one.
Okay so that is 4 points of guideline on choosing a laptop for back to school from me,
remember you are on a tight budget so buying without a rational decision could cost you a lot
cheers!