Get a good deal on a student's PC

You may also see internet service providers and mobile phone companies offering ‘free’ laptops. They are anything but, of course, with the cost of the computer covered by the monthly payments you make over the lifetime of the contract.

That is not to say all such deals are bad but check the small print and add up the monthly payments plus other charges ­ and get the company to confirm a total cost of ownership before signing.

Tools and features
Spend up to about £500 on a laptop today and you are likely to find a relatively low-powered processor such as one from Intel’s cheaper Celeron range, although some cheap laptops do include dual-core chips. Either is fine for everyday tasks, but generally you can forget most games. Netbooks use very low-powered chips such as the Atom.

For storage we would recommend at least an 80GB hard disk ­ some netbooks have a solid-state hard disk only, with a capacity from 2GB to 20GB. That is not much so an external hard disk might need to be added. Some netbooks come with Ubuntu Linux, the open-source operating system.

We would recommend Windows 7, XP or Vista for education purposes because getting drivers for printers and other peripherals is easier. It’s also worth noting that while Vista can scrape by on 1GB of memory, 2GB will make a difference to performance.

Other vital features include built-in wireless networking and at least two USB sockets. A CD or DVD writer is preferable for accessing education material and provides an easy way to back up your work.

With so much free software available, bundled applications are now less important. Open Office handles documents while Zonealarm and Avast can handle the security aspect.

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