A fairly 'light' topic for a Friday :)

I'm going to start my Master in September and was considering whether to buy a new laptop for it. I currently have a Chromebook, which I find perfect for my day to day stuff, but I was wondering whether I will need a Windows machine in order to run MS Office software. I'm doing a political research course which will inevitably require data manipulation.

Is it still possible to get student rates for MS Office?

Also - what is the normal thing for people to take into lectures/seminars now? Does everyone have laptops?

Most of the undergraduates at my uni have Macbooks, but that probably tells you more about their socio-economic background than it tells you about good laptops!

I wouldn't worry about what everyone else does. Do you want to make paper notes or make notes on a computer? Do what you want to do.

From my lectures I would say around 30% of undergraduates are using laptops for note taking.

I've never seen a postgrad take a laptop into a seminar.

MS Office is helpful and most unis provide free access to Office 365, which you can download on to your own PC/laptop. There's no reason why you can't use alternative software though.

Are you doing a taught or research masters? Maybe you will get a desk or access to a PC anyway? Will you need a high speed laptop or just something basic? That depends on your discipline I think. As a PhD student I did all my work on my uni PC because my laptop wasn't fast enough, plus I liked having the bigger screen.