QUINCY, ILL. -- School hasn't been out for very long, but before you know it, it'll be time to start school shopping.

If your student is in the market for a new computer, you may have a few questions about which laptop is the right one.

KHQA visited with the Geek Squad at Quincy's Best Buy this afternoon to answer some of those questions for you.

"The first thing you need to be aware of is what college requirements may be. Some colleges require certain things to be on the desktop. Anti-virus controls, certain programs need to be on there," says Hayner.

That means you should contact your college to see if it requires any certain programs. Next, let's talk about desktop versus laptop. Desktops typically give you more memory, larger hard drives, better graphics cards, etc. So if your student is staying home, a desktop may be the way to go. However, if your student is heading off to college in the fall, a laptop is probably the better choice simply because of its portability. Many colleges have WiFi on campus, which means students can connect to the internet no matter where they go on campus. Now, let's talk price. Typically, a laptop will cost more than a desktop, but the price of laptops have come down a lot in recent years. You can get some for just more than $300.

"The only downside to some of these lower end laptops, like the $329 laptops, you're looking at a single core processor, older technology which isn't going to scale very well as your needs grow," says Hayner.

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Jesse Hayner with the Geek Squad recommends a low- to mid-range laptop costing about $500 to $600 for the average college student. But he says if your major will require a lot of graphics or use programs that take up a lot of space, you'll want to get a more productive computer.

To clear something up, Jesse Haynor mention single core versus double core processors.

Think of the processor as the brain of your computer.

If you run a lot of programs at once or do a lot of multi-tasking, a dual core processor is going to work better, because it's like having two brains.