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Computer technology is still riding the harsh upswing of Moore's Law. The computer has become the college staple that the slide rule used to be. If you have decided to buy a new computer for college like many others, there are a number of factors to take into account. First pay attention to your major. The needs of a liberal arts student and an engineering student are not going to be the same. The next question should be one of price. Finally, ask yourself what sort of recreation you want the machine to enable. There is no one-size fits all computer, so make your purchase only after you can answer those three questions.

First, choose your major. A liberal arts major needs the computer for research, for writing, and for communication. An engineer or pure scientist will need it for research, specialized programs, programming, writing, and communication. A pre-med will need a computer capable of all those things. An artist will need a computer for graphic design, video editing, sound editing, and communication.
Anyone who does internet research will have either a lot of windows or a lot of tabs open. If they are writing at the same time, even more windows will be open and more programs will be running. Especially if you plan on listening to music while working, RAM is essential for a liberal arts major. RAM stands for random-access memory, and it's the analogue of working memory in humans. RAM roughly determines how many things your computer can think at once. Processor speed, on the other hand, will not be so important for a liberal arts major. Each of those programs exert a low load on the processor because they are mainly displaying information, not manipulating it. None of those programs' files really require much space either- it's incredibly hard to fill a modest 40 gigabyte hard drive with text files and the occasional picture. None of the liberal arts major's needs really constrain them to any one operating system, so feel free to buy Mac or Windows.
The scientist, on the other hand, will have to care about processing speed. Many classes these days require specialized programs that exert a heavy load on the processor. Mathematica, for instance, is capable of giving numerical solutions to differential equations (it's impressive, if you don't know what it means) but that solution can take a little while to find sometimes on a slow machine. RAM will still be important, of course, because scientists are just as likely to be doing too many things at once as

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