Tech Wars

Tech Wars
Chase Kuhnhausen receives help from a Best Buy specialist while looking for a tablet on Oct. 10,2013. Photo By: Ally Doty
Chase Kuhnhausen receives help from a Best Buy specialist while looking for a tablet on Oct. 10,2013. Photo By: Ally Doty

By: Alexis Lugo

Many students at Pensacola State College use laptops or tablets to complete their homework, instead of a desktop for your home. Over the years, technology has grown more advanced and continues to grow every day. Cell phones are thinner, computers are becoming more portable and manufacturers have made it possible to browse to a new page by simply tapping the screen. This advancement in technology has also given personal devices more security features. When unlocking your device, you can set it up to unlock it with your fingerprint, your voice or even your picture.

Technology has taken a big step forward in advancement.

When you go shopping for clothes, you try on each article of clothing to ensure that you are going to like how it looks both on the rack and on yourself. Just like shopping for clothes, when you’re interested in buying a laptop or a tablet, you want to be positive about the device that you are purchasing. Each student has different likes and dislikes about these devices. Stephen Penrose, a sports medicine major, shared his feelings on laptops verses touchscreen tablets. “I prefer regular laptops,” he said. “I’m just used to them. They don’t glitch like touchscreens do.”

Best Buy contains a large variety of laptops and tablets. Their employees are knowledgeable about the merchandise and are ready to assist you when you need help. Christian Cody, a Computer and Sales Specialist, has been working at Best Buy for six months. “Asus, HP, and Lenova are our top sellers and are technically the number one sellers in the United States. Apple is also quite a large seller,” informs Cody. These brands each have their own strengths and weaknesses. “I recommend Asus because they make all of their own parts. Pretty much anything in an Asus computer comes from them. Much better quality control standards,” Cody said, “HP, for example, outsources a lot of their parts from all sorts of different companies. The company includes it in their chassis and calls it theirs. A lot of the parts are made by other companies, where Asus, they’re going to make the chassis the motherboard, the power supply, and the display. Everything on the computer is made by them basically.”

For college students, when looking for a laptop to assist you in your school work, you’re going to want the best product out there. The one with the best program, the fastest processor and the device with most accessibility. The truth about these devices is there’s no particular brand that is better for a college student as opposed to another brand. “There are certain things you want to look for, RAM and hard drive do not matter,” said Cody. “The only thing that’s going to matter is your processor. If you’re looking for a really good life span, with good battery life, and everything considered, you want to get a fourth generation Haswell i5 processor.”

Buying a laptop is an in-depth process. There are many different brands and models to choose from. You need to know certain things about each different brand and model before making a purchase.