The Perfect Student PC

After years of parent-teacher meetings, questionable fashion choices, bewildering math homework, and a seemingly endless string of teenage crushes, your kid is finally out of high school and on the way to college. Congratulations! Or perhaps your children are just entering high school--and you've got all that to look forward to. Good luck!

Either way, summer vacation is coming to an end, and you realize that your resident student is going to need his or her own computer. You need to get your child a machine that will make it through school (without costing an arm and a leg).

Don't visit manufacturers' Web sites or your local computer store just yet. If you listen only to what your kids ask for (depending on their interests), you'll probably be spending a fortune just so that they can play their favorite shoot-'em-ups with a fancy LCD monitor and surround sound, for instance, instead of cracking the books.

Now it's time to practice what you've been preaching: Do your homework. For colleges and universities, carefully look over curriculum requirements and visit the school's Web site for useful information that might help fine-tune your decisions. Howard University's School of Law in Washington, D.C., for example, lists recommended minimum PC specifications on its site, and it also provides some information on how to get a loan to help pay for the laptop.

You'll want to look over specific course necessities as well: An industrial design course, for example, may require a specific CAD program, in which case you'll have to make sure the computer you buy meets the software's minimum hardware requirements. Some high schools also have policies regarding laptops; check with school administrators (or the school's Web site, if it has one) for any recommended features.

With information about the school's prerequisites in hand, use this guide to help figure out what you need to know about different components. Remember also that many PC makers, including Dell and Gateway, offer refurbished (or remanufactured) systems. You can save a little money, although the pickings might be slim. For more information about the pros and cons, check out "Consumer Watch: Refurbished PCs--Sweet Deals or Lemons?"

If you'd rather build a PC yourself, see "Step-By-Step: Put Together a Custom PC." If you're thinking about upgrading an older PC, check out "The Upgrade Path to a Perfect Student PC." And for specific product recommendations, including PCs, sound systems, keyboards, MP3 players, and more, see "The Well-Equipped Student: Best High-Tech Gear."