Let’s Talk about Laptops for Law School Part II
Guest post by Jess Murray, Professional Writer and Researcher
With education becoming increasingly dependent on technology, and law students needing smooth technical performance as well as portability from their laptops when moving from room to room and dorm to dorm, it is important to consider the intricacies of laptop functionality, and the specific needs of law students, when making a new purchase.
SPEED
First and foremost among most students’ minds is performance. Typically busy and often rushed for time meeting deadlines and running numerous programs at once, swift and smooth operational speeds are vital. With mere minutes remaining before a vital assignment is due, the dreaded slow-down or system crash could prove the deciding factor on why a student failed to make the grade.
GIGA-WHAT?
Two of the most important factors that determine the speed of a laptop’s performance are the processor and RAM. However, the type of processor and RAM being used is vital; gunning for the highest number of Ghz/Gb won’t always yield the best results. A more well-designed processor with a better internal architecture, but with a lower number of Ghz, will outperform a rickety old processor that has a higher base figure, in the same way that in the film ‘300’, when assailed by endless hordes of poorly trained soldiers, the 300 tank-sized, war-conditioned ‘Spartans’ win.
Consequently, it is best to plump for the latest generation of Intel processors, dubbed i3, i5 and i7, over previous processor iterations such as the Core 2 Duo range. The ‘i’ series of processors boast ‘Intel Hyper-threading’, which enables faster multi-tasking for those of us who like to keep everything open for ease of access. In the ‘i’ series, a higher number denotes a higher level of performance. While i3 should be adequate for most students’ needs, i5 boasts ‘Intel Turbo Boost’ technology. A fairly self-explanatory title, Intel Turbo Boost speeds up the processor’s performance by over-clocking it to a higher level of performance than the Ghz stated on the box-the 2.53Ghz i540M processor, for example, can be run at up to 3.06Ghz. Meanwhile, types of RAM can vary too-DDR2 and DDR3 are the most common types, and DDR3 is vastly superior in terms of speed, so for optimum performance, DDR3 RAM is the ideal choice.
THE SOLUTION IS RESOLUTION
Of course, there are many other factors to consider when purchasing a laptop. Considering the amount of time students generally spend on their laptops, display quality is paramount; when reading long blocks of text, crisp resolution will make the laborious task that bit less agonising, at least on the eyeballs. The latest Macbook Pro arguably boasts the best screen money can buy. With the critically acclaimed ‘retina display’, it boasts a resolution so high that the human eye cannot detect individual pixels on-screen, no matter how close it is to the display. This means that clarity is unmatched, and text appears as sharp as ink on paper.
The new Macbook Pros offer a captivating visual experience
SIZE NEED NOT MATTER
Screen size is also an issue of contention. While smaller laptops may facilitate greater portability, many students lament the prospect of squinting at a small screen long into the night. One potential solution to this conundrum, which enables both portability and a better viewing experience, is to purchase a compact laptop sporting a HDMI port. This means that the laptop can be plugged into a TV at home (provided it also has a HDMI port, so they may be linked by a HDMI cable) and the laptop’s display can then be viewed on a bigger screen for long work sessions at home.
GET A (BATTERY) LIFE
When law students are enduring a mammoth lecture about professional indemnity insurance, and the latest case law in their city, battery life is key in sustaining their studies in grueling study sessions away from mains power sockets. Indeed, a long battery life will do a lot to prevent the potentially catastrophic premature death of a laptop’s battery mid-lecture, and loss of all unsaved notes. ‘Ultrabooks’ are the new-fangled range of laptops on the market which boast impressive battery life without compromising performance. Remarkably thin, they are a good choice for students wanting a portable powerhouse that won’t run out of juice before the day is out. Additionally, while some laptops take some time loading up after being rudely awoken from sleep mode, ultrabooks are raring to go in an instant, meaning that when time is of the essence, these nippy devices will always be ready for some instantaneous note-taking.
Ultrabooks are remarkably thin and sleek; perfect for law students who are encumbered enough as it is by books as thick as their thighs
Side note by LR:
Do you want to see your writing on this blog? I’m all for guest bloggers, so if you’re interested in writing a piece about law school, then shoot me an email at legalrabbithole(at)gmail(dot)com. I’ll be waiting!
I’m a real tech geek. The perfect law school laptop needs to have a SSD. SSD stands for Solid State Disk. It costs around $100 for 128GB or $200 for 256GB but it will increase the speed of your laptop way more than moving from i3 to i7. The gist of it is that SSDs are around 10x faster than regular hard drives.
This means that when your computer crashes in the middle an exam, you get back to working in 20 seconds instead of 2 minutes, you will be very happy. Applications will load in one or two seconds instead of 5-15 seconds. Once you get a SSD, you can never go back!
I feel like battery life and light weight are the two most important factors for me when determining which laptop to buy for my first year of law school. I read that the exam programs at my school run best on PC’s rather than Mac’s, so I have decided to go with a PC. I have been reading numerous reviews for ultrabooks and had fallen in love with the Asus Zenbook Prime, however, a lot of reviews said they had terrible touchpads that jumped all over the screen and made it frustrating to type. That is not something I want to even take a chance on dealing with while trying to take notes or an exam.
So I am back to square one. If only it had been something less substantial, I would be getting the Zenbook Prime. (Still may do so) I am really undecided.
There are only jobs for less than half of law grads.
But the Special Snowflakes keep going to law school.
Here’s the latest from Professor Paul Campos:
TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2012
To the Class of 2015
To the class of 2015, welcome. At this point in the proceedings, tradition dictates that I spend some time elaborating just how amazing and talented each and every one of you truly is.
But I’m not going to that this year. And let me tell you why: If so many people hadn’t spent that last 20-odd years telling you just how talented and amazing you truly are, you might not be sitting here today. And just where are you today?
You’re sitting in the faux courtroom of the Titanic School of Law, preparing to spend the next three years sailing straight into the iceberg known as the American legal profession. OK, everyone in an odd-numbered seat, raise your hand. Thank you. None of you are going to get jobs as lawyers. Do you know why? Because you’re not going to hustle and network enough.
J/K LOL! That’s not why. The real reason is because there are only enough legal jobs (sort of) for half of you. So half of you aren’t getting a job as a lawyer. Hey I know people go to law school because they’re bad at math but that equation’s not too tough to figure out, am I right?
And you people in the even-numbered seats, don’t start fist-bumping each other just yet. You know what the jobs you’re going to get are going to pay? $40,000! Sounds impossible doesn’t it? You’re going to be real lawyers after all. But check it out: last year the median reported salary for people graduating outside the top dozen or so law schools was $55,000. And that’s a big exaggeration, because only 35% of the graduates of non-elite law schools had their salaries recorded. Guess which graduates were more likely to have their salaries recorded? You in the middle of the front row in the Princeton sweatshirt. That’s right – the ones with higher salaries. Well reasoned my fine young man: I do believe you’re already thinking like a lawyer!
So half of you aren’t going to be lawyers, and as an added extra bonus you’ll pick up a degree which makes it a lot harder to get non-legal jobs. Oh wait, what’s that you say? A law degree is “versatile?” You’re killing me Smalls. Let me clue you in on a little secret: non-lawyers hate hiring people with law degrees. It’s true! They think you’re going to run off to a high-paying legal job as soon as one opens up, or they think they’ve got something wrong with you because you’re not practicing law, or they think you’ll sue them, or they just generally hate lawyers.
Plus most of you – future lawyers and non-lawyers with law degrees alike, are going to have unbelievably massive debt when you graduate. I mean have you seen what we’re charging now to go here? Every year we jack up tuition far faster than inflation yet again and I tell myself, that’s it, we’ve gone too far this time, they’re going to stop coming – and every year here you are again!
Maybe you haven’t done the numbers. Allow me: You got a $30,000 “scholarship,” right? Oh man I love that one: Target should call their discount rack “the scholarship section.” So you’re going to pay $33,000 this year in tuition. Hold on tight to that scholarship, because we’re going to raise tuition on you $2000 each of the next two years. So that’s $105,000 right there. It’s nice that your parents are paying your rent and otherwise helping out with living expenses, but you’re still going to borrow another $500 a month or so over the next three years or so for books, car payments, cell phone bills, and so on. And don’t forget the bar review course (That’s where you learn all the stuff we didn’t really teach you).
So you’ll be lucky if you only take out $125,000 in loans. But wait, there’s more: You know what the balance on those loans will be when the first payment comes due? $147,000! Amazing isn’t it. The mean old federal government just got rid of the subsidized loans that pay your interest while you’re in school, so interest will be accruing the whole time you’re here. It’s like an astonishingly huge credit card bill on which you never make a payment. Plus this doesn’t include your other educational debt, which we don’t know and don’t want to know anything about.
So a very few years from now, with the exception of a handful of you who will be lucky enough to sign up to be helots for a giant law firm, plus a few others who come from rich and well connected families (actually there’s a lot of overlap in those two groups for deeply mysterious reasons we’ve never been able to understand), all of you will be either practicing law for peanuts, or not practicing law at all and trying to figure out how to remove the stigma of your law degree from what you will be thinking of as your permanent record, while struggling with veritable and growing mountain of high interest debt that you can’t get rid of – lawyers say “discharge” – in bankruptcy.
All of which raises an obvious question: Why would anybody sign up to do what you’re doing to yourselves? I don’t know and I don’t want to know — I’m actually being paid $300,000 per year to never ask that question to myself or anybody else. So forget everything I just said. You can be sure it’s something you’ll never hear a law school dean say again.
POSTED BY LAWPROF AT 11:26 AM