10 Back-to-School Bargains for College Students

January brings with it many excellent values for students returning to college. Here are our 10 best suggestions:

1. Load up on software. Back-to-college time is also start-preparing-your-taxes time. The "big box" office supply stores—Office Depot, Staples, and Office Max—offer wonderful software deals if you buy programs together with a tax preparation program. Some of the best (all free or practically free, after rebate) are SpySweeper, Norton AntiVirus, System Mechanic, Easy CD/DVD Burner, Resume Maker Pro, and the single best value, Nuance PDF Converter Pro (which lets you convert PDFs to editable Word and WordPerfect files; usually $100, free at Office Depot). The cheapest tax program, at under $20, is Tax Cut Basic Federal, which includes one free E-filing.

2. Buy discounted textbooks. Look beyond the campus bookstores to online retailers. Some of the biggies include amazon.com, bn.com, and half.com, but many students will save money by checking comparison-shopping sites such as bestbookbuys.com, cheapesttextbooks.com, booksprice.com, and bigwords.com. And you might even consider chegg.com, campusbookrentals.com, and bookrenter.com for semester-long book rentals.

3. Investigate netbooks. One of the hottest and most useful items on college campuses are netbooks, or minilaptops, 2.3- to 3.1-pound mobile computers that retail for about $349. You'll double your note-taking speed in lectures and, with any luck, improve your test grades for about 20 bucks a week. We advise getting one with Windows XP (not Linux) and with a real (120-160 GB) hard drive (not an 8 GB solid-state drive). Consumer Reports offers a very good review of competing models.

4. Splurge on cheap hardware. College students everywhere can benefit from record-low prices on computer peripherals. Treat yourself to a printer for your dorm room—about $50 for Brother, Samsung, or Lexmark inkjet printers—and you'll never again have to convince your professor that your paper was late because the printers at the computer lab didn't work. Also worth considering are a thumb-drive to transport your notes from your dorm to the library or to your study group (about $10 to $15 for one with more space than you'll ever use; we like the SanDisk Cruzer Freedom, which nicely retracts and has a large hole to fit on your key chain), and a pocket microcassette or digital voice recorder (about $25 to $40; we like the various Sony and Olympus models) to get down those easily perishable flashes of insight you have as you're taking in the football game.

5. Visit the libraries. An incredibly useful website that only recently went public is WorldCat (www.worldcat.com). Here, you'll be able to look up any book, electronic publication, and CD/DVD at virtually any library in the world. Then, having found what you want, you can hoof over—or, in many cases, link over—to the interlibrary loan department at your college library, which can usually get the book in a matter of days (one day for some articles and electronic items). Be sure to look at the very informative YouTube video at WorldCat's site, which shows you how to export citations in a variety of formats using various tools, including our favorites, EndNotes and Refworks.

6. Learn to use E-resources. Your tuition and fees have paid for many scholarly electronic resources, including paid subscriptions to journals, newspapers and magazines, and databases. Begin by checking your college library's home page (often under the heading "electronic resources"), then visit (either in person or by E-mail) the reference librarian at the main library (at bigger universities, there might also be departmental libraries, with librarians with more specific expertise). You'll be amazed to see how eager librarians are to help at the beginning of the semester, when there aren't hordes of students all wanting last-minute fixes for their papers.

7. Get proper beverage equipment. Every lecture or section goes better with a beverage. Now would be an excellent time to get a thermos. We like the Thermos Nissan 16-ounce compact stainless steel bottle, available for about $25 at amazon.com and elsewhere, or, for students who really want to pay attention in lecture, its 26-ounce older brother, about $30. These not only keep your beverage hot, they have a decent cup and a good pouring mechanism (it's very hard to take good notes after the spout has poured hot coffee all over your legs).

8. Get the best Facebook apps. Calendar from 30 Boxes will help you organize your semester, compose to-do lists for all your courses, and invite friends to upcoming events like the cram-before-the-midterm study group. Divshare will allow you to share your class notes, reading outlines, and research materials (as well as photos, music, and videos) with classmates. And Classes 2.0 will let you post your class schedule on your Facebook page. For more ideas directed especially at college students consult CollegeDegree.com and Campus Grotto.

9. Spiff up your video viewing. For late-night video watching, you'll enjoy the VLC media player that plays virtually every format known to man (including the often-difficult Flash .flv format). Download it for free at http://www.videolan.org/vlc/. And while you're at it, download shareware that will enable you to capture YouTube videos. One of the most popular versions is available from CNET. Hey, college isn't supposed to be all drudge work.

10. Help yourself. Inexpensive paperbacks offering students detailed advice about how to do well in college are one of the welcome trends of the last few years. Needless to say, we like our own book, Professors' Guide to Getting Good Grades in College. Another good one is Feaver, Wasioleka, and Crossman's book, Getting the Best Out of College: A Professor, a Dean, & a Student Tell You How to Maximize Your Experience. A nice book, written by a very smart student, is Cal Newport's How to Win at College: Surprising Secrets for Success F rom the Country's Top Students. And for students who need help getting their parents out of their faces (or parents who need help getting out of their student's face), we recommend Letting Go, by a dean of students, Karen Coburn, and a psychotherapist, Madge Treeger. As Ben Franklin put it, "God helps those who help themselves."

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