<p>I’m currently in community college and commute from home, but I’ll be transferring next year. If I get into my top choice, I may be able to commute from home like I am now. So my question is, would I really need a laptop if I go this route? Do most people use their laptops in class to take notes? I’m going to be building a desktop soon, so I’d like to use that until I graduate.</p>
<p>Some people find note-taking easier on computers, others don’t.</p>
<p>If you’ll be commuting, then the only issue I see that could arise is possibly a presentation, if one came up.</p>
<p>Depending how far your school is, it may be nice if you’ve got to stay at school for extended periods between classes.</p>
<p>(I personally couldn’t go without one, though I’ll be living on-campus)</p>
<p>Hmm… I have no idea if presentations might come up, but there’s always the possibility and the last thing I want to do is scramble for a laptop the last moment. How much do extremely simple, stripped down laptops go for? This is just for basic word processing, PowerPoint, and internet browsing.</p>
<p>Get a netbook for like $250-$400. It’ll do all the simple things you want, nothing too complex or processor intensive.</p>
<p>If you are commuting from home, you will probably have a lot of downtime at College (too far to go home between classes). Having a laptop will let you get some work done during that downtime.</p>
<p>My daughter has yet to take her laptop out of the dorm room. But for her, the dorm is no more than 10 minutes away.</p>
<p>You should not need a laptop for presentations. If you do one, you load it onto a memory stick and use the classroom computer.</p>
<p>I would get a cheap net-book if I were you, just so you can do basic things like write papers/surf the internet between classes if you want, and also so you can take it to group meetings. $400 will get you everything you need and more, you can get cheap ones for under $300 that’ll hardly do anything more than get online, but that might be all you need if you want to write papers in googledoc.</p>
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<p>What if the classroom computer isn’t working that day? This actually happened to me in Fall 2007. I brought my laptop as a precaution and ended up using it.</p>
<p>Would you guys say most people use a laptop in class to take notes? Can you give a rough percentage from your own experiences?</p>
<p>Based on my experience, most don’t.</p>
<p>In my classes that have 30 students, maybe 3 have them in class, and they’re not taking notes on them (they’re on facebook or playing some stupid game).
if you haven’t needed it to take notes yet, you won’t need it for notes next year.</p>