Important things to consider when buying a laptop for college

Size: It is important that the laptop is small enough and light enough to carry around with ease so that it can easily be brought to and from college but the screen still needs to be relatively large as we do graphic design and Photoshop skills Which require a relatively large screen for working on detailed images.

Warranty: Is an important factor to consider when using a laptop is going to be an integral part of college life. Meaning if it breaks you need to be able to get it fixed and not wait around till you can find the money to do so. In this regard perhaps paying a little extra for some extended warranty would not be a bad thing.

Battery life: When using your laptop while out and about in college or on your way to or from college it may be important to insure your laptop has a long enough battery life to last between charges. This is not a factor to be overlooked as it may seem unimportant compared with some other factors but when it comes down to it. If your laptop keeps running out of battery you can't do much with it.

Graphics card: Many laptops come with integrated graphics cards which may not be suitable for things such as graphic design and Photoshop it is important to check this out when buying a laptop and perhaps go for a laptop model that comes with an ATI or NEVADA graphics card that can support such programs.

RAM: It is important to have at least 2 GB of RAM to ensure that the laptop can run basic programs and function with multiple programs at once but it might be advisable to upgrade this to around 4GB to insure more taxing programs such as Photoshop run smoothly and do not freeze or crash.
It is also important that you have enough VRAM Photoshop specifications recommend that you have at 512MB which may cost extra as most standard laptops usually come with 256MB which is the very minimum required to run Photoshop.

Accessories: Having a bag to carry your laptop in may be important if you need to bring it back and forth from home to college without it getting damaged many computer shops may throw in a free bag if you're purchasing an expensive laptop so be sure to ask.
A mouse may also be a good investment as attempting to correctly perform detailed tasks in Photoshop may be difficult with a touch pad.

Hard drive: Hard drive space is not such a pressing issue as one might expect as there are many ways to store your files and pictures online for free with programs such as drop box or one could simply use the IADTs own storage system on the computers here that can be remotely accessed from home. Not to mention how external hard drives are becoming cheaper and cheaper meaning it is easy to get an affordable one if necessary.

CD-ROM drive: Although not strictly necessary it may be helpful to get a computer with a CD-ROM drive as it will allow you to avail of the wide array of DVDs that the IADT library has available to students and it is notable how many modern laptops have done away with CD drives entirely.

Anti-virus: Anti-virus software is an important thing to have on any computer that you use online and is made even more important by the fact that you need to have some sort of anti-virus installed to use IADTs remote file access. It is important to keep this in mind as purchasing anti-virus programs can be expensive and you can often get a year or so with certain laptop models. Otherwise there are several free antivirus programs online such as AVG.