How to choose

Choosing a Student PC Solution

Choosing a PC for use at University can be a confusing process. The Student offers have been designed to simplify this process, providing a range of solutions specifically developed for Students needs, with the added benefit of discount in the process. Whether you intend to buy through the programme or not, some of the issues you may wish to consider are discussed below;

What will you use your PC for?

For many students a PC is central to both work and recreation: Your PC may be a key facility to support your studies from research through to completion of items of work, but it can also be at the centre of your communication and entertainment. From staying in touch with your friends and family via email, accessing the internet, through to down loading music, playing games and watching DVD's, your PC is also likely to be an essential entertainment centre. Given these factors it is perhaps not surprising that around 90%* of students decide to bring their own personal computer to university or college.

What do you need to consider?

PC: At the heart of your selection is of course what PC to buy. Today most students select laptop PCs so that you can easily move and use them in any location, at home, on campus or anywhere else you need to study. With your PC being so important, ensuring it is going to be highly reliable is obvious. You also need to ensure it has a high specification processor to be able to cater for all of the different requirements you may have now, and in three or four year's time. To support this you need as much memory as possible (more RAM helps processing speed) and large hard disk capacity particularly if you are going to be downloading or recording music or videos. Finally the operating system, normally Windows XP or Windows Vista lays the platform to control all of the different items of hardware and the software you will want to use.

Software: The next key consideration is the software to enable you to quickly and easily create great-looking documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and manage e-mail and schedule your time. Microsoft Office is the most widely used suite of applications software which you will almost certainly have used at School and home. The latest suite of this is Microsoft Office 2007. There are different editions of Microsoft Office from the Professional Plus version which includes Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher and InfoPath, through to the cut down Student version with fewer applications. As well as ensuring you have the right software to be able to do the things you want to do with your PC, it is important to ensure your software is purchased legitimately. If you are offered “pirated” versions beware - this is illegal and also exposes you to security risks. Of course you also need to ensure you have capable Internet security suite to keep your PC and your personal data safe when you are online.

Support: When you're up against tight deadlines or just if your entire music collection is on your PC, you need to know there is effective support behind you to rapidly resolve any hardware problems you may experience. Although all PC's should come with a warranty, this would normally involve returning and waiting for a repair or replacement. A full support package in contrast, such as that from Dell, ensures a engineer can come out to you as well as providing web and telephone support in the first instance.

* Ignetica Ltd, Analysis of the UK Student Computing Market May 06

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