Back-To-School Buyer's Guide 2008

Once again the Summer season draws to a close and your school bus is getting ready to resume its daily route. It's back-to-school shopping season, and this year we're here to help you find the perfect notebook.

Our comprehensive back-to-school buying guides help you narrow down the selection of hundreds of laptops to just a few select notebooks that meet your needs. If you still need someone to explain why you might want a $300 ASUS Eee PC 2G Surf or a $3,000 desktop replacement notebook with a powerful graphics card you'll find links to full reviews of each notebook inside each guide.

NotebookReview.com Back-To-School Buyer's Guide 2008

If you don't want to take our advice on which notebooks are the best in each category, you can get advice on which notebook to buy from our forum members! Visit our What Notebook Should I Buy for School forum to ask what everyone else thinks you should buy based on your needs.

 

Also, keep an eye out for various student discounts. Many companies offer them, and forum members will be glad to point you toward the deals!

 

Shouldn't the Dell D430 and the Toshiba R500 also feature on the classroom friendly category? Also the 13" Vostro.

Or should we call it the shoulder-friendly category?

John

 

I'm not really sure about some of the picks on the list, especially the Gateway T series and a lot of the DTR classifications...Typing this from an M1530, and I cannot see it as a DTR in any sense. Same goes for the T61, 6700t, and MBP 15...The lack of the dv5z/dv5t on that list is also highly questionable.

Other than that, its not a bad list, could be rather helpful for back to school shoppers.

 

Yes, seriously...anyone not needing an ultra-powerful machine should heavily consider the ultraportables. D430, HP 2510p, Lenovo X200, and R500 are all great choices and light on the shoulders.

Plus, you can actually carry them around without weight complaints...and they are small enough to fit just about anywhere (especially those quaint little pieces of wood colleges think are 'desks').

 

There are literally two dozen notebooks in every category (with the exception of the mini notebook/netbook category) that we seriously debated including in the list.

It boiled down to the editorial team saying, "What's the point of making a back-to-school list that is basically a list of every single notebook from 2007 and 2008 in our Notebook Database?"

The point of the Back-To-School Guide is NOT to say, "These are the absolute best notebooks in each category." We're just trying to help students and parents narrow the field so they can buy a good school laptop. That also means that things like price and ease of availability (either online or in brick-and-mortar stores) had to be factored into the final lists.

We made certain to recommend the "What Notebook Should I Buy" forum because the editorial staff realizes that there are MANY excellent alternatives that didn't make it on the guides but would make great back-to-school notebooks.

 

Gotta agree with that, a 13.3" notebook is about the absolute max that fits on a college "desk". Go anything larger than the MacBook, and it becomes unstable, like the falling off said desk type of unstable.

I think all we are trying to say is that even with the price/availability constraints, those aren't the best choices that could have been there...

As for the netbook category, that looks more like a listing of every possible subnote/netbook on the market, not a selection of the good ones. It even has the complete piece of junk VIA CloudBook thing...

 

I have the Dell 1420 and I would say it is to heavy to bring to class and be used on a desk. It might be a good size (little big for my liking) but it is old so there are many lighter options.

Over all I really think this is a good guide.

 

Did I miss it or there is not a wording about any student looking to purchase a laptop should first consult your school's requirement for laptop before you start going through these guides/discussions? I know it's kind of common sense, but sometimes people forgot about it, especially freshmen.

 

There are quite a few schools that don't have guidelines for notebook buying...UW doesn't, for sure.

 

Most universities, unless you're going to one specific-in-major, don't have requirements for laptops.

 

why wasnt the inspiron 1720 listed under desktop replacement??? its probably the best in value for the specs you get.

 

Not necessarily true about the 13.3". I used a 15.4" MacBook Pro on some pretty tiny desks. Granted, ANY laptop (even a 10" one) will leave you no space leftover on a college desk! But yeah, I'm a lot happier with my MacBook Air now in terms of portability.

 

Its just that laptops larger than 13" are usually bigger than the surface of the desk, so to be on the safe side, I'd really not advise someone to use a notebook larger than 13" on a university desk.