Gifts for Students - Laptop, Stethoscope, Beer or a Pasty?
As the new academic year is almost upon us we thought it would be helpful to offer a few light hearted but well meant ideas for gifts for students who are beginning new courses.
Many students will be leaving home for the first time and will suddenly begin to realise the true cost of living. Even though Student Unions up and down the country try hard to shelter the newcomers from the true price of beer there will come a time when the blue and brown beer vouchers are thin on the ground.
For less than thirty pounds you can buy a complete Home-brew kit - tomorrows professional drinkers need to be able to reflect back on the good old days when they brewed pints for less than 40p but failed to heed the manufacturers advice of storing for two weeks after bottling/barrelling resulting in getting an upset tummy.
Students coming to the South West will find very few home brew specialist shops - Exeter Students can stock up at Quayside homebrew a curious shop which stocks a good range of beer kits, equipment and ingredients for homebrew enthusiasts and newcomers to the sport.
I’d like to mention my personal favourite but was horrified to find that Merv and Hazel at the homebrew centre have retired. Cheers!!
For a medical student or anyone beginning a medical training course a stethoscope is a must. I believe that some medical schools have a list of recommended stethoscopes for medical studeents so beware if buying one as a gift - it may not be approved by the medical school. The Littman cardiology III stethoscope is almost certainly on the list of any Medical School and although it is higher in price than many other Littmann stethoscopes you can be sure it will be a high quality tool for the job.
A colleague just mentioned “pens” but I suspect this generation of students would prefer a groovy portable pc, notebook or laptop computer. And what a choice there now is - even adding colour options (at a price) to “reflect your style”. The only way forward would be to take the views of real customers and a selection of blog posts help identify things to look for, avoid and recommended shops to buy from.The laptop rural family living blog suggest Toshiba Laptops which although far from the cheapest laptop offers a good range of entry level and professional machines. On the other side of the coin our chum at Extreme Power laptops cites laptops as the topic of his latest post although it is not especially helpfull.
For 2nd 3rd year returning students who have overspent and already living a life and funding studies with credit cards - a 0% credit card (on balance transfers) to help ease the repayments before they find gainful employment (or crap jobs) after college.
Alternatively you could just stuff a wad of notes in a brown envelope and let them decide.
If only there was a pasty gift voucher - Munch on and best wishes to all new students.
What about gifting a web domain to a geeky kid, where he can have his own personalized web site cum blog??
I think all I can say to that blog posting… is you´re right… cost of living is high and is becoming higher everywhere. I say drink less beer and enjoy eating food! As far as laptops go… do shop around.. I bought my laptop through the University because I thought I would get a lot of software updates - has never happened. So, to all prospective students, do shop around and get the laptop which suits your needs best. Credit cards are a bad move… work more!! Karlin
hmm laptop seems the best option
it will show your concern and technology together:)
Go for a laptop. You can find nice one from different websites as well. but before getting any one it is better you compare their prices as well as specifications and then go for the one which fulfills your requirements
I noticed the comment on quality college laptops above and wanted to mention that though they might cost a little extra, a macBook might still be a good option for an freshman.
There will be those that say that its a little more expensive and that getting free software for it might be more difficult but let me make this comment.
If your bank account has ever been cleaned out or depleted due to a trojan or keyboard sniffer picking up your account information than you know that the extra cost for a portable that very rarely ever gets hacked would have been worth the price.
Laptop is the best choice, and drink less beer ofcourse
As far as laptops go, Packard Bell are reasonable cheap laptops. I have seen Toshibas around the £300 mark as well. Toshiba and Fujitsu were near the top of a reliability survey I read, as were Sony, but Sony laptops are more expensive.
laptop is the best choice - we at webmarketingnow use them for all our online work
I think I’d rather have a pasty to be honest
although I am pleased with my cheap toshiba laptop
Yeah, the laptop is the best option, even if you did’nt want the laptop. You could sell it then have hundreds of pasties!
A reconditioned laptop is definitely the best option but it would hard to justify selling it for beer or pasties. However, you’re supposed to be dumb when you’re in school so I say sell it and buy all the beer you want!
The beer is very tempting, but for students in college, its not hard to find a keg party that you can crash- so I would want to look into some cheap laptops, at least with a laptop you can do research on the net or something, whenyou are not busy drinking, or just sell the laptop to some nerd for beer money