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Why you should trust us: It's in our name, PCWorld. We've been reviewing laptops for decades, with exacting standards applied to all facets of the user experience, from performance benchmarks to features to the rigors of daily use. Our experts know their stuff and have curated a comprehensive list of the best laptops for college students, with their particular needs in mind.
After you finish looking over our recommendations, be sure to hit our daily updated roundup of the best laptop deals to try and score your favorite laptops on sale. Or check out our roundup of the best laptops for even more recommendations. We've also got a great article about the five laptop features that matter most.
Updated March 28, 2024: We replaced our top pick choice with the Dell Inspiron Plus 14 because of its fantastic performance, reasonable price point, and exceptional battery life. We also updated the list of recent laptop reviews, so be sure to check that out near the bottom of the page.
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Memory (or RAM) is the perfect example of this. Your PC uses RAM to hold data temporarily: When you're opening applications, working on large files in Photoshop, or even juggling dozens and dozens of browser tabs, that data is being stored in the system memory, not on your SSD or HDD. The more memory-intensive tasks you do, the more RAM you should have. It'll keep your computer feeling fast and responsive.
Many laptop shoppers know this, but not exactly how much to get. So we've broken down what to expect from common RAM configurations, plus some tips at the end for purchase strategies.
Is 2GB of RAM good for a laptop?
For modern Windows computers, 2GB of RAM will feel slow. You won't be able to run many programs simultaneously, much less have more than a few browser tabs open at one time. These days, most Windows laptops come with 4GB as the baseline configuration, and for good reason.
(As for Apple laptops, they've long left even 4GB RAM behind as a baseline.)
If for some reason you encounter a laptop with only 2GB RAM—perhaps an older budget model being sold secondhand—it's only worthwhile if you can immediately upgrade it to 4GB RAM or more. That means the laptop should have user-accessibl
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The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage is still high, but any dip in rate movement is a good thing.
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