It’s August, and that means its time for students to start thinking about the computer they carry to class. It’s an incredibly important piece of hardware — the centerpiece of student life, really. If you’re going to college, especially, you’ll use it to cram out papers, read source materials, watch movies, play games, and waste hours and Twitter.

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　　What you buy is important. You’ll want a system that is quick enough and portable enough, but also affordable on your budget which, since you’re a student, likely isn’t that large. It’s a tough choice to make, and recent advances in tech have actually made it harder. Now, students have to pick between not only desktops and laptops, but also Chromebooks and tablets, which can be argued to have their own place in a student’s backpack.

　　There’s no simple answer to the question of what you should buy, but if you know what you want to do with your back to school PC, you should be able to pick the right one. We’ll help you out on this week’s Close to the Metal.

　　Close to the Metal is a podcast from Digital Trends that takes a deep dive into computing and PC gaming topics. Each show, we’ll focus in on one topic, and leave no stone unturned as we show off the latest in hardware and software. Whether it’s the latest GPU, supercomputers, or which 2-in-1 you should buy, we break down the complicated jargon and talk about how user experience is affected in the real world. Please subscribe, share, and send your questions to [email protected]. We broadcast the show live on YouTube and Facebook at 10 a.m. Pacific / 1 p.m. Eastern, every Tuesday.