Heading to Campus? Look for the Student's Advantage

I know that being a student is often synonymous with taking an oath of poverty, but there are times when students get to use that privilege to their benefit. Nowhere is this truer than with PCs.

Most students want a new PC when heading off to college. Rightly so—a new PC will last them through four years without wearing too thin on the technology side. Today most students favor laptops because of the freedom to work (or play) anywhere, but laptops still cost substantially more than desktop computers.

This is the season of back to school specials, but beware: Some are good deals and some are just normal pricing disguised a bit. Here's a rundown on where the deals are:

Check Your College Web Site

Before you do one other thing, visit your school's web site. They often recommend a manufacturer and a fairly specific minimum configuration for your PC. You'll be able to find out how much of the campus is wireless and decide how important the latest wireless spec is to you. Mostly you'll know whether the campus favors a PC or Mac, or if it's ambi. The biggest reason to buy what they like is campus tech support. They'll often make antivirus software and other utilities available to students who stick to their platform. It's sort of a school uniform mentality. And campus support is always better if you've got a pretty standard PC. The advice on computers that appears on Swarthmore College's guideline pages gives you a good idea of what to expect.

Visit the College Bookstore (Online or Off)

Once you're accepted into college you have the benefit of buying computers at a heavily discounted price from the campus bookstore. Almost all but the smallest colleges have made arrangements with specific computer manufacturers that can save you money—anywhere from 5 percent to 25 percent is typical. Some schools have formed collectives to get better discounts for their students. Many of the Midwestern schools belong to a collaborative to which Gateway and Dell offer special student discounts.

Occasionally (especially around back to school season) the school gets a deal that's actually worse than the non-school sale prices. Make sure you research the price at the manufacturer's site and at a store or two before you buy. Definitely wait to buy MS Office from the campus bookstore. They all sell it at the student/educator price.

Now Pursue Your Other Options

Once you've ruled out buying from the college store, you want to check the web for places that offer your school a discount. Right now the Apple Store is running a "buy a Mac and get a free nano" campaign for back to school. You need to identify your college from the list of schools that Apple provides. The price starts at $999 for a MacBook, which seems about $100 less than normal. If you don't have a music player this is an especially great deal.

At Best Buy, when you find your school on the list you can save $150 on select PC models, including HP Pavilion and Toshiba Satellite. When I went through the site online there didn't seem to be any check of my student credentials either.

At Techbargains you can get the latest offers in more or less real time. When I visited, the back to school news was $470 off select Lenovo ThinkPads, but the deals change moment by moment.

Sony's always had a funny idea of a bargain. The VAIOs are gorgeous and the promotion Sony is running allows you to save $300 off of select notebooks when you buy the student value combos (including a few accessories you may or may not want). But youch! With the exception of the VAIO N Series Student Value Pack ($1,200), the other sale prices are all over $2,000. The one I'd want is the 4-pound Sony VAIO TX, which starts at $2,299.99.

Perhaps the best overall deal I found was at HP's shopping site. For under $1,000 the HP DV650t is a student's dream, blending the right amount of multimedia cool with solid workaday computing. At Circuit City you can pick up a slightly older HP DV6449 notebook with webcam, DVD/CD burner and player, built-in wireless, and more for $749.

Hear about any other good student bargains out there? Please share.