Nick
September 22nd, 2004, 20:25
I'm not sure if this goes here or not, but anyway.
In this thread (http://www.freewebspace.net/forums/showthread.php?t=55907&page=1&pp=20), I got responses about my laptop for college:
I don't know why you need to buy computers for college, especially for Engineering, in a US college, where school costs like 100 times more than here in Canada ($100CND/semester + books).
I am in univ. in CS and I don't need any computers. The university has a few thousand very good computers in their labs. I like to go there and meet friends and study. And also, you are given space on the university's servers, which you can access from anywhere.
And if you really need your own space, an external hard drive should suffice.
Oh yea, I can also rent a laptop, for free.
Don't get me wrong here, but you will not use those computers for study. Study is done mostly with books. In any program you may be. With that amount of $$$ you could take chicks out. Which is more important in the long run. :D
true, true. cbp, you're right on. a computer with top of the line specs isn't required at all for engineering, you can easily get by with a pentium 400mhz, or even no computer. especially in first year when most of the courses are pen and paper math and physics courses.
I would have recommended just getting a cheap laptop which should be enough and allows you to be mobile, while also reducing the amount of stuff you bring if you live in the dorm. as well since now we're about to face a major shift in computing to 64-bit dual-core cpus for the consumer market, much of what can be bought now won't be as upgradeable or will become obsolete even quicker than normal.
no doubt that's a kickass system for gaming though.. hope you can find the time for that :D
well when I first came to FWS (which wasn't even called freewebspace.net back then) I think I was 10th grade? I am now a senior undergrad student so =) Yeah, it's really been a few years.
Nick, cbp and stu are exactly right. US, Canada, it doesn't matter. I'm in California. Heck I even go to a public university (a UC). I'm a CSE major. I find that the only time I use my computer now is when I come back to my apartment late at night and chat with friends, check e-mail, listen to music, and perhaps write paper (rarely; and for my GE classes, not for the engineering ones mind you =). When you have to handin all your programs from the school servers anyway there is no reason why you shouldn't be working in the lab instead. If you use windows/mac you could SSH from home yeah, but that either means you have to upload every time you edit or you have to use vi/vim/emacs/unpleasant editors (heh I never got used to them); or you could have Linux at home, but careful still since it still might happen that your program compiles at home and doesn't on the school server.
Particularly if you are any other engineering than CS you probably won't be on a computer much. Especially when you get to 3rd year and assuming you actually try to get A's and not get by with C's, I don't think you'll be spending much time online or whatever.
So in conclusion... getting a computer that good basically means you'll have a good time gaming in the dorms in 1st year (that's what I did with mine), and perhaps more in 2nd year depending on how you go with your social life, and that's about it.
All of you guys must attend colleges that work EXTREMELY different than Virginia Tech. I have used my computer every single day for studying and school related things. Starting with the second week of school we have been using our laptops in class for programming in our Engineering Exploration/Fundamentals class. All of our programming homework assignments have to be emailed to our professors. I don't have a Chemistry for Engineers book, instead we have an interactive DVD. My entire Linear Algebra course is video based over the internet. All of my teachers post their notes online and all of the assignments online.
Getting by with a 400mhz computer would be impossible. The 3D based programming software that we use in Engineering Exploration/Fundamentals requires a good chunk of system resources.
If I didn't have computer access for one day, I would royally screwed. This is just for General Engineering mind you, my friend in Computer Science uses his computer in all the same classes I have (Engineering and Computer Science are tied into each other) plus in his CS course and CS laboratory.
Anyways, it's cool that you guys can get by without computers but I beg to differ with the "it doesn't matter what college you go to" comment about computers not being used.
In this thread (http://www.freewebspace.net/forums/showthread.php?t=55907&page=1&pp=20), I got responses about my laptop for college:
I don't know why you need to buy computers for college, especially for Engineering, in a US college, where school costs like 100 times more than here in Canada ($100CND/semester + books).
I am in univ. in CS and I don't need any computers. The university has a few thousand very good computers in their labs. I like to go there and meet friends and study. And also, you are given space on the university's servers, which you can access from anywhere.
And if you really need your own space, an external hard drive should suffice.
Oh yea, I can also rent a laptop, for free.
Don't get me wrong here, but you will not use those computers for study. Study is done mostly with books. In any program you may be. With that amount of $$$ you could take chicks out. Which is more important in the long run. :D
true, true. cbp, you're right on. a computer with top of the line specs isn't required at all for engineering, you can easily get by with a pentium 400mhz, or even no computer. especially in first year when most of the courses are pen and paper math and physics courses.
I would have recommended just getting a cheap laptop which should be enough and allows you to be mobile, while also reducing the amount of stuff you bring if you live in the dorm. as well since now we're about to face a major shift in computing to 64-bit dual-core cpus for the consumer market, much of what can be bought now won't be as upgradeable or will become obsolete even quicker than normal.
no doubt that's a kickass system for gaming though.. hope you can find the time for that :D
well when I first came to FWS (which wasn't even called freewebspace.net back then) I think I was 10th grade? I am now a senior undergrad student so =) Yeah, it's really been a few years.
Nick, cbp and stu are exactly right. US, Canada, it doesn't matter. I'm in California. Heck I even go to a public university (a UC). I'm a CSE major. I find that the only time I use my computer now is when I come back to my apartment late at night and chat with friends, check e-mail, listen to music, and perhaps write paper (rarely; and for my GE classes, not for the engineering ones mind you =). When you have to handin all your programs from the school servers anyway there is no reason why you shouldn't be working in the lab instead. If you use windows/mac you could SSH from home yeah, but that either means you have to upload every time you edit or you have to use vi/vim/emacs/unpleasant editors (heh I never got used to them); or you could have Linux at home, but careful still since it still might happen that your program compiles at home and doesn't on the school server.
Particularly if you are any other engineering than CS you probably won't be on a computer much. Especially when you get to 3rd year and assuming you actually try to get A's and not get by with C's, I don't think you'll be spending much time online or whatever.
So in conclusion... getting a computer that good basically means you'll have a good time gaming in the dorms in 1st year (that's what I did with mine), and perhaps more in 2nd year depending on how you go with your social life, and that's about it.
All of you guys must attend colleges that work EXTREMELY different than Virginia Tech. I have used my computer every single day for studying and school related things. Starting with the second week of school we have been using our laptops in class for programming in our Engineering Exploration/Fundamentals class. All of our programming homework assignments have to be emailed to our professors. I don't have a Chemistry for Engineers book, instead we have an interactive DVD. My entire Linear Algebra course is video based over the internet. All of my teachers post their notes online and all of the assignments online.
Getting by with a 400mhz computer would be impossible. The 3D based programming software that we use in Engineering Exploration/Fundamentals requires a good chunk of system resources.
If I didn't have computer access for one day, I would royally screwed. This is just for General Engineering mind you, my friend in Computer Science uses his computer in all the same classes I have (Engineering and Computer Science are tied into each other) plus in his CS course and CS laboratory.
Anyways, it's cool that you guys can get by without computers but I beg to differ with the "it doesn't matter what college you go to" comment about computers not being used.