Laptops, credit cards and mobile phones have become indispensable things for many Vietnamese students.

Laptops going to lecture halls every day
Thu Minh, a student of the Foreign Language Faculty of the HCM City Open University, said that she feels the laptop she has purchased is very convenient.

“I just need to type key words and then ‘enter’. The computer will provide results just after several seconds,” Minh said about her computer.

The scene of students with laptops in lecture halls is seen regularly nowadays at universities. Hoang Anh, an information technology student, said that the laptop nowadays is not a luxury item for students anymore.

“With laptops, students nowadays do not have to carry tens of kilogrammes of books and notebooks on their shoulders to lecture halls every day. Everything can be found in a small laptop. You just need to do some research on your computer and you will get what you want,” Hoang Anh said.

However, it seems that students have been so relying so much on laptops that they have become lazy.

Thu Minh related that many students use laptops to play games and surf the Internet instead of learning. “Some of them think that when they have laptops, they can know everything, while they do not understand that a laptop is just a machine which cannot replace a human’s brain.”

Credit cards, the choice of many students

Many students have realised that they can use bank services to save time and reserve their time for learning.

Kim Thu, a student of Van Hien University, related that previously, she had to go to the post office to get money from her parents from home. However, this has become quite simple now: with her ATM card, Thu can get money any time and at any place there is an ATM.

Commercial banks nowadays are launching a lot of promotion programmes to attract more clients, while offering free cards, which are great opportunities for students to access services.

Meanwhile, Ngo Viet Hung, a student of the HCM City Post and Communications Institute, is satisfied with his card because his money is safe.

Mobile phone, the close friend

In the past few years, every university student has gotten a mobile phone.

Le Minh Luan, a student of the HCM City Culture University, said that one can buy a good mobile phone for only 700,000 dong; therefore, all the students in his class have mobile phones.

“We live in dormitories, where we don’t have TVs, but we have mobile phones, so we can get updated information daily, from stock market watch to sports news,” Luan said.

Vietnamnet (17/09/2009)