When you're in college buying a laptop is a necessity nowadays, but don't let the flashy ads and one-liners fool you. Odds are you don't need 8GB of Ram or a 3.0GHz quad-core processor to handle what you'll need for class, even if you plan on watching a movie and downloading something at the same time.

Save your money for more important things like food and rent; you can still get everything you need without paying an arm and a leg.

Nowadays most laptops are designed to break down after a year or two  and be replaced. This can cause many issues if you wish to easily and inexpensively repair your laptop in the mean time. Always remember to stick with stick with a brand name you've heard of. Compaq, Dell, HP, IBM, Sony or Toshiba. Anything beyond that and it can start to get difficult and expensive finding parts down the road if something breaks.

A great place to buy cheap laptops for college is online. But first you need to know what you'll need!

Laptop computers are very different from desktops. Primarily due to the fact that they have a limited amount of space and power that they can use. Laptops employ a number of tricks to save battery life such as CPU scaling, where a processor scales down its power usage (and speed / performance) in relation to the task at hand to balance performance and power consumption. You ought to be aware of what type of laptop you are looking for in order to get the right fit for your needs.

Laptops for the most part can be broken down into six unique categories each with its own intended purpose of use. Take a look below to to match your needs with the right laptop for college.

Budget Laptops

Budget laptops are developed to provide a basic functional laptop computer at low price point. Budget Laptops often use a wide range of processors due to the fact that they use scaled down processors designed specifically for them or they also use older processors that were previously included in higher end laptops. All of the processors listed here should be able to do all the basic computing tasks such as web browsing, email, word processing, presentations and DVD playback. . About the only thing that value Laptops will not be able to do well is gaming and high-end graphics applications. Here are some of the processors to look for in this range:

• AMD Sempron low-end
• AMD Turion 64
• AMD Turion X2 higher-end
• Intel Celeron low-end
• Intel Core Duo
• Intel Core 2 Duo higher-end

Ultra portables

Ultra portables are laptops that are designed to be as light and compact as possible yet powerful enough for most the common applications such as e-mail, word processing, presentation software and playing videos. These laptops are geared towards those people who travel are always on the road or who want a system that is not very cumbersome. They are willing to sacrifice computing power and additional peripherals for portability. There are few choices for this category of laptop, making comparisons very easy. Below are the processors found in ultra portables:

• AMD Athlon Neo
• AMD Turion 64 X2
• Intel Core 2 Duo

Netbooks

Netbooks are a relatively new breed of laptop. They tend to be  even smaller than ultra portable laptops and a lot cheaper. The reason for this is that manufacturers have limited the laptops functionality through the removal of features. The processors typically use very little power, thus they also tend to have limited performance. They are best suited as portable internet systems rather than as full blown laptops and most lack any optical drive. So far only Intel and VIA have made processors specifically for this market, AMD has chosen not to enter it. Below are common processors found in the netbook segment:

• Intel Atom Z520 and Higher
• VIA C7-M
• VIA Nano

Thin and Light

Thin and light laptops are able to perform pretty much any computing task at least on some level. These systems often vary widely in terms of price and performance. They tend to perform better than the counterparts in the value category or ultra-portables but they are smaller and more portable than the large media oriented desktop replacement laptops.

Business

Business Laptops generally focus on stability and reliability. Depending on your needs these can be an excellent solution. Business laptops trade off stylish looks and other features in favor of sturdy build quality and security features. Although they typically come with a three year standard warranty and offer excellent tech support and mail in or on site repair. If you need a system for CAD or are going to be toting around a laptop all the time, this is the category you'll be looking at.

Desktop Replacement

Desktop replacement laptops are designed to be a complete system that has the equivalent processing power and capability to that of a desktop, but in a mobile offering. They are much  larger and bulkier in order to fit all the components that allow the system to perform at almost the same level as a desktop in every aspects of computing. For the most part general a desktop replacement will perform exceptionally well and will even be able to run new 3D games. Laptop gaming is getting very close to desktop performance,although the cost is prohibitive, generally costing multiple times more than an equivalent desktop system.