What kind of laptop is best for me?

Go for laptops from HP, Dell, Lenovo, Vaio, and maybe a Mac. I personally like HP and hear mixes of reviews saying how good or bad they are but they are still really good and cheap (some at least) and good for college. Things like the ENVY 6t or a Pavilion dv6 or 7t would be good but around $1000. Lenovos are fairly powerful and good for college. Like IdeaPads or ThinkPads would be good. You'll be sacrificing design and weight but you'll also get a lot of power in a good priced package. Dells are the generic college laptops, but I'm not saying theyre not good. I'm saying that people usually buy dells for college and that's what Dells are designed for.

Hope it helped...

Just about any laptop manufactured in the last two years and that cost more than 400 dollars when new will meet your requirements.

It depends. What was your last laptop computer, and did it have any faults ?

What do you need for the size of the screen ? Some people are able to work with small screens, some cannot stand them. Some laptops have a connector for an external monitor, which allows use of a separate monitor with a larger screen when one is available.

What do you need for a keyboard ? Some laptops have dinky keyboards, or the keys are hard to type on due to the placement. You have to try out different keyboards. For people like me who can touch type over 40 words a minute, most laptop keyboards are a tremendous frustration and we have to use an external keyboard at a desk. Otherwise we are condemned to misery having to use the "hunt and peck" style of typing with two fingers, if we don't, we have to frequently backspace to correct errors.

Look for a store selling used laptop computers. They buy computers from people, clean the dust out of the inside, make sure the keyboard and screen and USB ports work and battery and power supply works, then sell it for less than a new one, with a short warranty.

At this store you can see a wide range of laptops and test out each keyboard by typing some sentences on it, just open a text editor and begin. You also get to examine the screen and make sure it works properly. You get to open and close the device to make sure the hinge isn't broken.

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You did not say how your last computer died. If the hard drive failed, it's easy to replace.

If the hard drive did not fail, you want to remove that hard drive. You can attach it to an adaptor called a USB-to-harddrive adaptor that allows you to plug the hard drive into another computer and get your files and data off of it, and then to wipe the drive to remove anything personal that is no one else's business, particularly banking information.

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If the screen has gone bad, a replacement screen can be gotten from another laptop that does not work and installed, but having a repair shop do this is rather expensive due to the labor involved.

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If the entire laptop died, it might be the internal power supply (which distributes power throughout the internal circuits), it might be the motherboard chips or some other component. A store that buys used laptops will attempt to determine what can be repaired or replaced, and if they can't, they will try to sell the parts to other stores/repair shops that can use the parts, as some of those businesses might have similar broken laptops in stock they want to fix. An old friend of mine has a side business doing just this, but because he lives in a small town, there aren't a lot of broken laptops availabe to use for parts, so he keeps in touch with other shops in other towns and cities for parts.

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I am amused you call yourself "fairly poor". Most college students that have little extra money find very creative ways to get what they need without having to spend a lot of money. I was like that my first two years. I sure found a lot of good stuff discarded at the end of the semester.

That's why I asked about the dead computer. You can trade it in an exchange at a used computer shop to reduce the price of a computer you buy at the shop. You can go by later and ask if they found what the problems were with your former computer just to find out what all could go wrong. Many laptop computers fail because of overheating - dust gets sucked into the tiny vents and builds up enough on the various parts that they get hot enough to fail permanently.

Asus U31 or Dell Inspiron 14z. Useful for school and won't break the bank at the same time.

They come with i3 processors. You can opt for an i5 processor, but only if you can budget for it. If not, then the i3 will work for your needs.

Mac