Usually around this time of year I talk about student technology. I get into all the minimum specs and what to purchase. This year I’m still going to give you my recommendations; but, I’m also going to let you in on what not to buy. At the risk of losing business, I’m going to tell you not to buy from my company.

Three of my four stores are in areas without restrictions on used items. In those three stores we sell a tremendous number of used computers to people buying them for students entering college. Used computers for college students is a bad idea.

Used computers are just that, used computers. Everything in them has been used including the hard drive where the data is stored. The typical life of a hard drive is three years which means that even if the hard drive is adequately tested it may not last very long. Hard drive failures are frequently accompanied by catastrophic data loss.

For the first time writing these articles, I’m suggesting parents buy a business class computer for college freshmen. Modern consumer class machines seem to self destruct after two or three years while business class equipment is simply better quality. Surprisingly, business class laptops really aren’t that much more expensive.

I mentioned hard drives earlier. Many current business class computers come with solid state drives which increase speed and battery life. As I wrote about in an earlier article, solid state drives have come down in price while reliability has increased. Comparing storage capacity of solid state to traditional drives isn’t fair because the price per gigabyte is still fairly high.

So, for under $500.00 you can get a lot of bang for your buck. Most business class machines are only sold online through vendors like Newegg and Amazon. In that price range expect to get an i5 processor, 8 gigabytes of memory and a 256 gigabyte solid state drive. Although I won’t recommend a specific brand here, I can tell you all major manufacturers have machines with these specifications.

Along with the computer, it’s a good idea to invest in backup hard drives. Backup drives start in the $50.00 range and have plenty of capacity to store years worth of documents. USB thumb drives are not a good solution for long term storage because they have a limited life. Having redundant backups of critical data is key which is why I wrote drives (plural).

I don’t care what the college tour guide said about the school having adequate printers. No school has enough printers to support all of their students during finals week. A good quality black and white laser printer costs under $100.00 and a typical student will probably use $50.00 in generic toner per year. Believe me, the $100.00 investment will pay itself off the first time your son or daughter can’t pass in a paper because he or she couldn’t print.

Money, money and more money. Trust me, I just got done writing two colleges nice fat checks so I am sympathetic to money woes. After spending thousands on tuition to have to spend another $1,000.00 seems like a major investment. However, if your son or daughter is attending a four year school then the $1,000.00 I just mentioned is only $250.00 per year which really isn’t that much. A good computer should last four years provided it’s taken care of and not dropped, lost or damaged by beer.

(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner.  You can read past articles at www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)