What brand of netbook is best for a grad student?

Netbooks usually don’t have optical drives. So don’t get a netbook. Dell and Toshiba have recently gotten into the cheap laptop business, you can get a pretty decent laptop for around $500. As long as you don’t need a powerhouse super computer for your field, you’d likely do well with one of these.

My husband and I bought a Toshiba from Best Buy earlier this year. We like it. But we’ve had it less than a month. So we really shouldn’t make a judgment yet.

A word to the wise, though. You should compare several retailers before you make a decision. One thing that we noticed is that Walmart and Best Buy had a very similar selection but Walmart was about $40 cheaper. When we started comparing the nit-gritty details we noticed that the Walmart models would have half the hard drive size or something drastic like that.

I think the most important thing if you are a grad student is that you get a laptop that will last you through grad school. You aren’t going to have the money to replace it, if something goes wrong. So read reviews.

Once you’ve got it nailed down to a couple of reliable models, then pick a laptop with better stats (speed, ram, hard drive size, etc).

I’d avoid newer Apple products because they haven’t had a lot of prior use the determine true reliability. Macs are also very pricey compared to their PC counterparts. As you’ll be a grad student your money can be better spent on food, clothing, and housing than on a marginally better computer.

That’s my two-cents.