Find your ideal laptop

From taking lecture notes to writing up a dissertation, a laptop is a very useful bit of kit for students. David Phelan recommends his pick of the best

Tuesday, 23 September 2008

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Sure there are computers on campus that you can use, but student life is a lot easier if you have a laptop of your own

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MacBook Air From £1,199

Not the cheapest laptop, but you’ll thank yourself for investing in it every time you effortlessly carry it from one lecture to another: it’s light and small, so it’s amazingly portable. You can opt for a faster model with flash memory instead of a hard drive, but it costs a lot more. If you want to watch movies on DVD, consider the separate SuperDrive. Altogether this is pretty irresistible. Doesn’t hurt that it’s the coolest looker, either. www.apple.com/macbookair

Sony Vaio VGN-TZ31WN/B From £1,599

Sony has long been king of the ultraportable market and this model is decent value, too. It weighs just 1.24kg but includes a 120GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM.

The 11.1-inch screen is exceptionally bright and sharp, making it great for watching DVDs post-study. Battery life on Vaio laptops is also outstanding. This model is black but it is available in a colour called Platinum Sand too, with a reduced hard drive and price. www.vaio.sony.co.uk

HP Pavilion tx2100 £699

This laptop has a 12.1-inch touch screen and a swivel hinge so that you can close it with the screen on the outside to use as a tablet PC; you can also use the supplied stylus to input text in this mode. Alternatively, flip the screen into display mode to watch movies, say. Decent specs include 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. There’s also a fingerprint reader so you can make sure it’s secure. It’s stylish too, thanks to a neat imprint finish. www.hp.co.uk

Acer Aspire One £249.99

A tiny and very affordable laptop, the Aspire One has a fast Atom processor. You can choose between this one and a £230 one with 512MB of memory and just 8GB storage. This one has 1GB and 120GB respectively. The 8.9-inch screen is highly watchable as well, so the only disappointment is that the battery struggles after a couple of hours; you either need to take your charger with you everywhere or plan to memorise afternoon lectures. No optical drive, either. www.acer.com/aspireone

Toshiba Satellite P300-160 £699

If you fancy a big display, the P300 has 17 inches of screen for you to watch movies or play games. Harman Kardon speakers help with the sound and there are white LED media controls which look good. There’s also an exceptional amount of memory (3GB of RAM and 320GB hard drive) for the price.The 1.3-megapixel camera is good for video calls and has face-recognition technology to sign in to Windows, which is cool. http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com

Dell Studio 15 From £429

Dell makes its computers to your specifications, so you don’t need to buy stuff you don’t need. The Studio range comes in seven different colour options, so choose one to make a statement. There’s a capacious 250GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM, though you can have more of either if you prefer. The 15-inch screen and keyboard are big and comfortable enough to use every day. www.dell.co.uk

Sony Vaio VGN-NR32M/S £449

It may be a Sony, but it’s still affordable. This basic model is a great buy, with a sharp, bright 15-inch screen, 2GB of RAM and a huge 200GB hard drive. It’s not the lightest model and there’s no integrated camera, or Bluetooth. The wi-fi antenna is not the latest “N” model, but it’s still passable. If you can manage without such things, this is a stylish and capable computer at a very good price. www.vaio.sony.co.uk

Asus Eee PC 901£307

Asus is developing its range of superportable, keenly priced laptops. This model is available in two versions for the same price: choose Linux as your operating system and you’ll find storage of 20GB; choose the more mainstream Windows XP and this drops to sharp, making it great for watching DVDs post-study. Battery life on Vaio laptops is also outstanding. This model is black but it is available in a colour called Platinum Sand too, with a reduced hard drive and price. www.vaio.sony.co.uk 12GB. The battery is heavier than on earlier Eee PCs but lasts a lot longer: up to around five hours. Online back-up space is included in the (reasonable) price. http://eeepc.asus.com/global/901.htm