Do Students Need a Computer?

If you are currently preparing to head off to college in the fall, you may be wondering what technology you need. Most students are on a budget, and this can make it difficult to know what to buy, and you may even be wondering if you can get through your studies just using a tablet. This article explores what you should think about technology wise before you start your course.

Can I Use My Tablet?

The short answer is probably yes. If you already have a tablet that can connect to the internet and access things like Google Docs for word processing your essays, then it’s quite possibly suitable. And, you can always pop into your college library to access a desktop PC if you should need one. However, there are some huge drawbacks to only having a tablet for your studies.

Firstly, the screen size is much smaller; this can make research difficult and tiring on the eyes. The larger screen of a laptop will make this part of your study much more simple, unless you like to go old school and dig all your references out of books.

Another drawback is that typing is generally going to be slower. You will either be attempting to type on the tablet keyboard, which, when an essay is a few thousand words, would be a huge struggle, or you are having to purchase extra accessories such as a Bluetooth keyboard.

Lastly, if your course requires any kind of technical or design work such as coding, graphics etc., you really might struggle on a tablet. While it’s not impossible, it would be extremely challenging and possibly at the sacrifice of your coursework.

What’s The Solution?

While it is tempting to just try and make do with whatever you already have, and with college facilities such as libraries and computer rooms it is possible, having your own machine at home will allow you much more flexibility and therefore productivity as you are not limited to working during library opening hours.

Student laptops don’t have to break the bank either. You’d be surprised by how reasonable they can be. Most courses don’t require anything hugely powerful, and a basic laptop with internet, email, and word processing facilities will be plenty for you to do your studies successfully while connecting with friends on social media.

You don’t even have to purchase an office system such as Microsoft Office, as Google offers a suite of comparable tools for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations absolutely free of charge. You also get 15GB worth of cloud storage on top to save you backing up your work.

Buying a budget friendly laptop is probably going to be a lot easier for you than trying to work on a tablet and college computing systems. It will give you much more flexibility in when you can work and allow you to work with more ease. It is also much easier to save your data to your own machine than it is on the college computing systems, so it gives you better access to your work whenever you need it.