Back to School - A College Student’s Guide

Delicious pointed the way to a back to school guide meant to be realistic in the type of gear college students should bring. While the guide is, overall, great; a few subtractions and additions would make things cheaper and help starving college students save some money.

Laptop Choice

Paul suggests a Macbook which we can second without hesitation but he doesn’t mention how to get it on the cheap. The student discount is good and all but the apple refurb store will often have great deals. These computers are basically new, they were returned for whatever reason and Apple made them new before putting them up for sale. (PS don’t do this with iPods).

Desktop

Paul goes on to give a desktop option. Ignore this option you’ll have fewer problems in the long run with the Macbook and you’ll get more done with less wasted time. Whats that? You’re a gamer? Great, that’s what bootcamp is for. Get it and move on with your life.

External Hard Drive = Backups

External hard drives are pretty awesome but if you’re like most non-trustfund baby college students 100 bucks is a lot of money. There are free alternatives that keep your data safe without the cash. Mozy offers 2GB of free backup which is usually more than enough for important docs and such. True you could loose your 50GBs of Mp3s but let’s be honest, one LAN party and you got it all back. (Mozy is in no way connected to UpforReview).

Laptop Bag, has to be expensive?

STM Makes very inexpensive bags but let’s go a step further because let’s face it, 30 bucks is still a lot of money, think of all the pizza; Your plain old backpack from last year is probably fine, sure there isn’t a laptop sleeve in there but a sweater will work just as well (and you have sweater in your backpack) and you don’t have to buy anything else.

You can always grab a notebook sleeve too for pretty cheap, think 10-15 bucks; use google.

Summation (That means the end)

Everything is pretty sharp, Listen to Paul and don’t waste your money on TVs and junk that at the end of the day you don’t need and just wastes money and space in a small dorm. If you want to watch movies use your laptop or go to a friends, it’s not that important!

Good luck living on the cheap