Despite the proliferation of laptops and netbooks, the vast majority of students still use their computers like $500 typewriters. Stop working so hard and be a better student by leveraging some clever computer tools to your advantage.

Every semester I get a new wave of college freshman into my classroom, most of them armed with laptops. For the last several semesters, I have been informally tracking how they use their computers. I always assumed that my students were using their computers to their full potential to help them with school, research, and such, but almost all of them were simply using their laptops as extremely expensive typewriters and instant-messaging terminals.

What good is all the computing power of the pre-1960s world sitting on your lap if you're not using it to make college life easier? The following is a guide for students everywhere that want to spend less time on the tedious stuff, and more time on the things like study and research that actually produce results.

Never do anything yourself that your computer can do for you
Never, ever, do something the hard way without checking to see if any easy way exists. Applications come in every shape and form to automate tasks on the computer. Never undertake a tedious task on your computer without first visiting a search engine and searching for a method of automating it. Whether you're resizing photos for a class project, renaming files, or crunching numbers in a spreadsheet, check for the simple—and automatic!—way first.

File Renamers: Renaming tons of files has to be one of the most boring and grinding tasks you can undertake. Never waste time renaming files. If you're on a PC, check out the powerful Bulk Rename Utility for a dashboard of options and the less-overwhelming but still effective Ken Rename. If you're on a Mac, you can download specialty apps like File List, but it pays to become acquainted with Automator, which can do so much more than simple file renaming.

Text Replacement: Unless you're writing the next great American novel, chances are you type a fair number of things with a high degree of frequency. Your email address, common phrases you use, formatting you find yourself typing over and over again when working on papers or taking notes, and so on, it might not seem like much but you can easily save hours over the course of a semester by using text replacement.

How does text replacement work? Each text replacement tool handles things a little bit differently, but nearly all of them have two basic methods: instant replacement and hot keys.

With replacement, you tell your computer to replace every instance of a string with another string—like notes1 becomes your favorite bullet-list format for taking notes, or mymail becomes your full email address.