Why are students buying 500 Euro laptops?

People have these things now. They're called bank accounts. They allow you to put amounts of money into them which accumulated are called 'savings.' These 'savings' allow you to buy things that you couldn't afford in the short term. Handy, they are.

Also, they have parents who might buy them the laptops.

Also, they might require higher-end laptops for various functionality.

Basically, people can get better stuff than you. Get over it.

In fairness this is going to be a once off and probably the single biggest material investment that they will make during college so they want what they think they need. I paid that for mine and thank christ it's still working 6 years down the road.

ILA wrote: »

Every time I come on Boards and look in the computer related forums, there's college students looking for advice on laptops to buy for "college work" and surfing the internet. Every thread posted they're looking for €500+ laptops

I recently got a new Acer Aspire One netbook for €300 Euro, over the option of a perfect refurbished laptop from a good supplier for €170 Euro which would more than do the work and leisure use they claim to want.

Often the same students protest against fees and claim they can't afford course materials, but where the hell are they getting €500+ for high end laptops?

Is there someone giving free money out again? I thought Anglo had stopped lending!

mammy and daddy i would imagine.

Personally, if i was going to buy a laptop, i couldn't justify not spending the extra 200 and getting more for my money.

Those netbooks are good for the likes of what you said, but suck for everything else. A decent laptop is a good investment, if you're going to use it for 3 years.

ILA wrote: »

Every time I come on Boards and look in the computer related forums, there's college students looking for advice on laptops to buy for "college work" and surfing the internet. Every thread posted they're looking for €500+ laptops

I recently got a new Acer Aspire One netbook for €300 Euro, over the option of a perfect refurbished laptop from a good supplier for €170 Euro which would more than do the work and leisure use they claim to want.

Often the same students protest against fees and claim they can't afford course materials, but where the hell are they getting €500+ for high end laptops?

Is there someone giving free money out again? I thought Anglo had stopped lending!

They never gave out loans for laptops unless there was a €500,000,000 building that went with it.

I paid 500 for my laptop.

It still is working and has never had a problem since I got it 3 years ago.

And it is so handy for keeping my mountains of college work on.

How could I afford it? Overdraft!

Why did I buy the more expensive one? Buy cheap you buy twice is my motto!

For University/College, I'd say that getting a fairly good spec laptop is a really good investment.

Once it's used properly for University/College, it can be a great strenght to getting a qualification..

Though, If the Uni/College has decent computers and access to them, it's not essential.

Paying extra might be a good investment for the. An older refurbished laptop might not have the same expandability as a newer one due to lower processor speeds, hard drive and RAM size. They may also have better graphics cards which are quite important for science/engineering courses as well as a longer of others. Generally they come with a longer guarantee and will probably last longer as well. As others have said screen size and keyboard size are important too.

It is worth spending extra especially if you plan to keep it for a long time. I spent €600 on mine about 4 years ago and it is still going strong and is well capable of handling the majority of tasks that I need. I could have gone for cheaper ones but they simply would not be good enough today.

Why do people who start threads bitching about phantom people they've
never met always include the non-obligatory (btw) reference to
society such as dole or college fees or whatever, ffs that doesn't
give your argument any justification - you're still moaning about something
that doesn't matter in the slightest & if something as ridiculously stupid
as this annoys you then you have a lot to be thankful for.

Here's my version of your thread using the same outlook:

"Why do people complain about what other people choose to do in a free
society where they have a choice to live as they please? It pisses me off :mad:
Why aren't they like me? I don't have "free money" so they shouln't
either, Anglo must be giving it to everyone except me There isn't,
after all, any other way to buy a laptop other than free anglo money :rolleyes:
I think 300 for a laptop is fine and because they want to spend
more they are wrong so if I include a reference to society I'll get
some form of justification. Because of this I think college fees should
be re-introduced out of spite because I'm angry students can afford
better laptops than me!"

Not sure when you were last in college, but these days most courses require the students to have their own laptops. Netbooks are actually fairly woeful if you want to be doing anything serious on them - I used one for my work once and it nearly drove me mad. You can only see about 20 lines of a code editor at a time on the damned things, never mind writing 10000 word essays.