Campus Drift

The college game has changed. You need certain gadgets to survive on campus these days. Here’s our guide to the Top 7 Gadgets for College Students.

1. Cell phone 

You’ve got to be able to communicate with your friends and family back home. And for drunken texts/calls at 4am. It doesn’t necessarily have to be fancy, but it is absolutely required. More and more students seem to be going to smartphones like the iPhone and Blackberry as well.

2. iPod

Maybe I should have called this an “MP3 Player”, but let’s face it - with over a 70% market share for portable multimedia devices, iPod is pretty accurate. Required for long walks to class, studying, and tuning out professors in giant lecture halls.

3. Laptop

Sure some people bring desktops. And those people suck. Not really, but laptops are much more common and beneficial these days. Useful for taking class notes, managing music and pictures and pretty much everything else. The top college laptop is now the MacBook, but Dell and HP are both represented well also.

4. HDTV

Although they used to be expensive and out of reach for college students, these have really come down and are replacing a lot of TVs around college campuses. You can get yourself a 32″ LCD for $600 from Best Buy or Wal-Mart these days - not bad.

5. TIE: Playstation 3 / XBox 360 / Wii

I don’t want hate mail so I’m going neutral on this one. You can argue for any console, though the Wii is clearly the most unique of the three. And girls will actually play with your Wii (good one). Seriously though, the Wii might actually be able to interest a girl or two whereas PS3 and 360 are much less likely.

6. GPS

Seeing as how people don’t really enjoy being lost this is kind of obvious why these have become popular amongst students. Though making road trips slightly frantic, these can really be useful especially if you are at an urban campus in a new city. Prices are very competitive these days with Magellan, TomTom, and Garmin (one of which pictured to the right) all at the top.

7. Digital Camera

Everyone’s got one, see Facebook photo albums as proof. It’s a requirement to pictures of you and your friends partying, and this is the way to go about it. Take pictures, go home, dowload pictures, upload pictures with witty captions to Facebook / Flickr.