Laptop for College

[rminter48]

I start school in a few months and need to get a laptop. Price range is around $120-$160. All it needs to be able to is type and connect to the internet, nothing special,

Any recommendations?

 

[olafgarten]

Do you need any special programs? Like word for example? If not, I would recommend a Chromebook. Although it's not $160, you can't get much for under $300 otherwise.

 

[csmith67]

I recommend any Asus products. I've built a desktop and never had any problems with Asus. Specs that I would go the lowest on is probably 4gb of ram. HDD depends on your needs. I'd at least recommend 120gb. Screen, battery, etc depend on what you want. I would suggest going with a little higher budget range so you're future proofed and you can work on heavy load programs that you may need to use in school.

 

[Entomber]

look on ebay or craigslist, you won't be able to find a new laptop in that price range

 

[velo3100]

I would check out some of the chromebooks as they are good value for money for this. You can try and get windows laptops from dell or acer as they are good with budget end laptops. Hp is also a good alternative.

 

[consolegamer]

Do you need any special programs? Like word for example? If not, I would recommend a Chromebook. Although it's not $160, you can't get much for under $300 otherwise.

I second the Chromebook recommendation. Your budget is really skinny though, so you may need to buy used. My big recommendation for college students is to buy something with really good battery life. That makes your laptop effectively 1-3 pounds (about half to one and a half kilos for civilised people) lighter because you don't have to carry the charger, and even if the charger is light, you don't know how hard it's going to be to find an outlet.

 

[Guest]

You're not going to find much worth buying under $200, and under $300 is still sketchy sometimes. If you're dead-set on staying under $300, this should meet your needs:
http/https/www.google.com/shopping/product/983495067282547266?biw=1517&bih=783&q=laptop&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&tch=1&ech=1&psi=lqwtVJWbKJCsyATa74DgDA.1412279420972.11&sa=X&ei=ja0tVK75BYe2yQTV34HwAg&ved=0CMMFEPMCMAU&prds=hsec:features

 

[Mike Zwarich]

I start school in a few months and need to get a laptop. Price range is around $120-$160. All it needs to be able to is type and connect to the internet, nothing special,

Any recommendations?

Are you sure you meant a maximum budget of $160? That's cheap for a tablet - you're going to have to go to classified ads or buy a very old laptop if you want to stay in that budget range. Not sure you're going to have the luxury of choosing between options - you may just be stuck with whatever is available very used.

If you're able to bump that budget up though, a Chromebook is about your best bet right now, at roughly $300. But you're not getting Windows, so no Steam, no installing programs. All you get is a browser. So if you're ok with using Google and flash-based browser programs for everything, it's cheap and good. If you want to play minecraft though - get a Windows laptop.

HP is going to be releasing $199 Windows laptops soon, to compete with the Chromebooks. No idea how good they'll be though.

http/www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2469467,00.asp