Erik Semmel, one of the owners of TAB Computer Systems, Inc. in East Hartford and co-host of “Computer Talk with TAB” on WTIC-AM gave Eyewitness News tips for buying a computer for students.

EWN: What should students be looking for in a computer?
Semmel: Basically you want to look for a computer that has at least 4 gigabytes of RAM for college kids and for high school kids because the operating system will be VISTA and VISTA requires a lot of RAM. If you buy a machine with less RAM, the machine is going to … have poor performance, so keep it to at least 4 gigs of RAM. Stay away from the 64 bit versions of Vista. You're going to try to get your kids the biggest and the best and that 64 bit version is out there. We've had some calls on our show about problems with 64 bit. Stick with the 32 bit version of VISTA. When you're buying laptops and pc's - especially for college - you want to find support locally. The colleges will offer some sort of recommendations on local support, so that when you're sitting there in your dorm room and the thing crashes, you're not calling somebody in India for help. You want somebody local. And that's really half the …battle. And many of the colleges will have arrangements with local support to get you up and running, or at least a deal that gets the support quickly to you.

EWN: Is it a good idea to take advantage of the computer expertise the college offers?
Semmel: It is. You don't want to be on your own dealing with computers. You might be pretty good at it. Nowadays, these kids are much more computer savvy than maybe five or ten years ago. But you want to have local support when that thing crashes on you. It will.

EWN: Should students buy their own computer and take it to college or take colleges up on offers and buy it at through the school?
Semmel: Take into consideration the deals at college. You're going to get a good deal and local support. You should definitely take advantage of it. Also, you're going to get the proper machine to interface with the college's network. Many, many people are going to be tempted to look at Mac. You're going to find less support on the Mac than you will on the pc's out there. But you will find the 'cool' factor when it comes to mac, so you'll be the coolest kid in the dorm with a mac. When you're also considering laptops and what have you for computers, you want to consider a back up. As these things fail on you and you've got your term paper on there, you need a way to get the data. And if you don't have a back-up, you're in big trouble. So ... dvd burning, usb thumb drives, external hard drives. Consider a backup as the second most important thing that you buy. Don't walk out of there without some method to back up your data.

EWN: Do you buy a fully loaded computer from a ‘Dell’ or “HP” or another brand-name or should I have someone build a computer for me?
Semmel: You want to stick with a name-brand when it comes to laptops, like Dell, HP. Those are the two big brands that are out there. Using the specs the college will offer you. So follow the specs. It's usually on their co-op website. They'll have a requirement that you'll need to fill. So if you match those specifications of processor, ram, operating system, and then call those mail order-type companies or buy it through the college, you'll be fine. If you try doing it on your own and build it yourself, the laptop, it's not a good idea.

EWN: What about software, say, for term papers?
Semmel: Students get access to student pricing on software. They get so much stuff for practically nothing. So it's a great deal. Use the co-op and take advantage of your student pricing. Again, though, take a look at the additional software: anti-virus, anti-spyware. You can get free software from AVG that's a great anti-virus that your kids will use. You need “ spy-bot “ for anti-spyware software. And again, backup.

EWN: What if I'm in high school and can't get the pricing deals college students get?
Semmel: Then you're going to be buying just the basic WORD package from your local Staples or wherever you want to pick up a box of software. But WORD and Excel are the typical software packages you'll find out there.

EWN: Is there anything students need to be aware as they start using these machines?
Semmel: You want to tell your kids to stay off the file sharing sites so they don't blow up their machines. I mean, they're going to want to go to sites and do things on their computer that's going to cause trouble.

EWN: What kind of sites?
Semmel : Kazaa, Bear Share, Lime Wire. All those sites are file-sharing sites where people will download movies, videos, all sorts of free music and those files will be embedded with viruses and trojans that will damage your systems.

EWN: What's the biggest mistake people make?
Semmel : Not knowing who's going to support them once they buy the machine. They find themselves an island in the stream with nobody to help them at all when the machine fails. Get the extended warranty, especially with laptops, so you'll have somebody to take care of your system when it fails. And get a good backup so when you send your warrantied laptop off to be repaired, they don't care about your data that's on it. So if you don't have a backup, they'll send it back nice and working, but blank. They have no care of your data. They'll actually warn you if you don't read the little slip that says - when you put it in the box - that your data is ‘not our priority’, so be aware that your data needs to be backed up before you ship it for repair. And it'll take about a week to get most laptops turned around when the thing fails. That's another issue. you back it up. If most kids can burn music, they should be able to back up their data.

EWN: What about concerns about the overheating of laptops?
Semmel: Laptops, if you keep them running for a long time, they will heat up and they can ….give you some discomfort … They've fixed a lot of the issues with the batteries melting down and actually catching fire. So if your laptop's not in use make sure it goes into hibernation or turns off. Don't leave it sitting there running because it just shortens its life.

EWN: As a student, should I buy a laptop or a PC?
Semmel : You want to buy a laptop if you're a college student, a pc if you're a high school student. There's no reason that I can see yet that a high school student should be dragging around a laptop. A pc is going to last longer. It's going to be able to take a licking and keep on ticking 'cause if you take a laptop as a high school student around, you'll be replacing it in a year or two as they beat it up.

EWN: What should I be looking for in a printer to print all my term papers?
Semmel : A three hundred dollar ink jet printer (or less) will do almost everything you want. Stick with HP, you'll have good luck. HP is a good brand.

EWN: What is the biggest problem you have to help your customers deal with?
Semmel : The biggest issue is spyware and trojans: people going to websites that are tricking them into making it look like it's a legitimate site,. They go out to that site and then the site says 'oh, you're infected with spyware, click on this' to download this package to fix it, and then that package of course reinfects them with even more problems and the machine just becomes useless.

EWN: If you’re a parent of a high school student, is there software to keep an eye on where he/she is up to on the computer?
Semmel: The best software out there is Spector Soft, if you want to watch what your kids are doing on the computer to “protect them” … It'll e-mail you where they've been going, what they've been doing on the computer. Obviously as a parent, you'd set whatever rules are out there as far as what you'd like them to do or not do on the computer. … Spector Soft allows you as a parent to monitor every activity on that computer and it'll e-mail you based on keywords and alert you to what they're doing.

EWN: What are your thought on the free e-mail accounts available?
Semmel: You can get free e-mail accounts from Google, free accounts from Yahoo!. You're going to get a free account from your college for e-mail already. So there's plenty of options out there as far as e-mail accounts. Again, when you get those free accounts, you'll be more susceptible to spam.

EWN: Do you have a favorite out of those?
Semmel: I would say the G-mail (from Google) is probably the most popular these days.