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Most of our public labs are PC systems with 156 seats, and we have a 30 seat MAC lab. All of these are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for use as teaching facilities and free use computer labs for you to do their research and/or assignments. Now that you have some idea of how our computer labs are set up, let us offer some recommendations outside of what your individual college department may suggest. We are providing a recommendation for both workstations, (either a desktop or mid-tower, which would be kept and used in their room) and laptops which offer portability and will allow you to take the system to class and the library, etc.
LAPTOPS:
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- In a PC Laptop configuration, consider the mobility of the unit and the care you will exhibit for that unit. We tend to recommend either Lenovo (used to be IBM) or DELL, with similar configurations to the full systems, however because of their size the laptop may not be able to contain everything expected like a DVD drive. Since the ultra slim models are so thin and lightweight, these components are left off the laptop and it is up to you to purchase something of a docking station that may include them. However, a Core i-7 processor over a Core i-5 and as much RAM memory as you can afford. RAM is the horsepower to your processor and the video output shares in this RAM.
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- So consideration of weight, size of screen, number of USB ports, touchpad or toggle buttons, are all part of the convenience factor. You may also want to investigate a touch screen that can be used for easier manipulation of applications.
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- For MAC Laptops at the lower performance end of the spectrum there is the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Air, 1.6GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz, Intel HD Graphics 6000, 8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM, 256GB PCIe-based Flash Storage, Backlit Keyboard (English) & User's Guide.
- On the upper end, we would suggest a MacBook Pro , 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, 2.7GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz, 8GB 1866MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM, 256GB PCIe-based Flash Storage, Intel Iris Graphics 6100, Force Touch trackpad, Backlit Keyboard (English) & User's Guide.
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- If you decide to acquire a MAC you may need to purchase and install VMWare or Parallels and a Windows OS to run some of the ENG-CS software they may need.
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Whatever PC Laptop you buy, please spend just a bit more and purchase the 3 year or more warranty, and if you decide to acquire a PC laptop, purchase the accidental warranty which protects the unit even if the damage is your fault. For Macs, a 4 year (including accidents ) warranty is available at the bookstore. This is one year longer than AppleCare, and AppleCare does not cover accidents. Believe us when we say that it will pay for itself!
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WORKSTATIONS:
- A minimum workstation PC system-
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