I just think the whole program seems rushed. I don't think there was any student input or surveys done either.

There are big questions that haven't been answered, notably will students still pay computer lab fees? If so why are students required to pay twice for the sane/similar service/product? If not, will that money go towards subsidizing the laptop costs?

Undergrad in nuclear engineering is one of the more computationally intensive engineering majors. There were only 2 classes that required heavy computer use, but you could simply SSH into the department cluster. Some of the other courses required the standard MS Office suite for work (lab reports).

Even with our major requiring more computational resources, we never had a trouble with computer space. Call me cynical, but to me some things don't add up.

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I made it through engineering with only using SCC computers.

Working on a masters right now. The campus I attend has WiFi throughout like most today. I am thankful A&M didn't when I was a student. I would have spent all of class surfing texags and failed out.

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Same. Had a desktop but didn't use it a ton.

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It says that the cost can be included in your financial aid package.

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nothing like financing an item that will be obsolete in 3 years over a 10+ year loan.

I "lived" in the CVEN computer lab for a couple semesters. It was the only way to make sure I had the resources I needed for some classes.


My dad told me a story about ChemE's back in the early 80's, so I have no idea if this is actually true:

The incoming freshman classes were too big for the available upper level professors & staff to handle, so they had to weed out about 30%-40% of the class.


In one of the freshman engineering classes, the profs assigned a computer project using the old punch card systems. The catch was that even if all the available punch card computers were in use 24/7 from the minute the project was assigned to the time it was due, only 60% of the students would be even capable of completing it. Naturally, students waited a bit and then there was a mad dash and nearly cut-throat battle for computer time using the punch cards. Thus computer space guaranteed that around 40% of the freshmen would be weeded out by the one computer project.

And if you made it through Engineering using only SCC labs, then congrats.


I couldn't.


Between HEC-RAS, EPAnet/WaterCAD, AutoCAD, and structural analysis programs, I HAD to use CVEN comp labs. A lot.

I definitely had to use the MEEN lab a fair bit for software, but the OAL have a lot of good stuff too. MEEN lab was ok my soph and junior year, but my senior year an extra semester it was overrun. Wonder if they've renovated or expanded.

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Sounds to me like Dell made a large donation to the college, and in return requested that computers be "recommended".

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We are a Dell campus. The Help Desk Microcomputer Repair Shop is authorized to do warranty work on Dell computers.

I wouldn't have been able to function using solely on-campus computers. The labs were usually crowded, and to be honest it was inconvenient to have to go to campus each time I needed to work on an assignment. Also, the VOAL is incredibly slow when working with computationally intensive software, such as MATLAB.

It's one thing for students to buy computers for either convenience's sake or because there isn't enough space (though I never had that problem in either undergrad or grad school).

It's a wholly different beast to unilaterally force everyone to buy an expensive computer.

I just came to Nerdery with this question. We got an email yesterday linking the web page. Is there a less expensive alternative to the Dell/Apple suggestions?

Here are the Dell PC specs...

4th gen Intel® Core™ i7-4800MQ 2.7GHz, 6M cache
8GB (2x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3L Memory
500GB Solid State Hybrid Drive
AMD Radeon HD 8790M Graphics 2GB GDDR5
15.6in FHD (1920x1080) Anti-Glare LED

if the school decides to reduce costs for "lab fees" I can see how this could help. but if you ask for lab fees AND students to provide their own computer hardware, that seems greedy.

From what I can tell, you would have to spend a significant more amount of money to get that laptop through other means.

Sentinel that is what I am seeing on the net as well. This is a pretty loaded computer. By just going i-5 intel would save about 400 dollars. What is the difference between Intel i-5 and i-7?

There's no consequence for getting something different, except getting help from TAs and profs may be a tad more difficult if you have software install issues. Firstly, it's about $150 cheaper on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Latitude-E6540-15-6-Notebook/dp/B00E7LX8IO

Secondly, if you wanted a laptop with similar specs, here are amazon results filtered to match that dell pretty closely:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_n_feature_keywords_2?rh=n%3A172282%2Cn%3A%21493964%2Cn%3A541966%2Cn%3A565108%2Cp_n_size_browse-bin%3A2423841011%2Cp_n_feature_four_browse-bin%3A2289792011%2Cp_n_feature_five_browse-bin%3A7817224011%2Cp_n_feature_two_browse-bin%3A562240011%7C562241011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_two_browse-bin%3A6565730011&bbn=565108&ie=UTF8&qid=1398104487&rnid=6565721011

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Sentinel that is what I am seeing on the net as well. This is a pretty loaded computer. By just going i-5 intel would save about 400 dollars. What is the difference between Intel i-5 and i-7?

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The main differences with the i7 is more cache and a faster clock. Most people will get by with an i5 but for engineering applications the i7 makes more sense.

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There's no consequence for getting something different, except getting help from TAs and profs may be a tad more difficult if you have software install issues. Firstly, it's about $150 cheaper on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Latitude-E6540-15-6-Notebook/dp/B00E7LX8IO

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Does the one on Amazon include warranty? If not, that would explain why it's cheaper.

WHy on earth would you need a 500 gb SSD?

That alone to me tells me it isn't a bare minimum machine. This is designed to make Dell a lot of money.

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WHy on earth would you need a 500 gb SSD?

That alone to me tells me it isn't a bare minimum machine. This is designed to make Dell a lot of money.

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It's not a 500 GB SSD. It's a hybrid drive. The SSD is just a portion of the drive for the OS and the rest is conventional. It's actually probably the best bang for the buck.

Looks like A&M deal has 4 year warranty and accident protection.

http://store.edutechu.com/p-2010-dell-latitude-e6540.aspx

I'm not saying it's a great idea but students aren't getting ripped off here. They're getting a pretty good deal.

The perfect solution is to have this laptop deal offered and encouraged, but not required.

The kickbacks must be sweet

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The perfect solution is to have this laptop deal offered and encouraged, but not required.

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Isn't that essentially the case? What's the punishment if you don't buy that dell?

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The perfect solution is to have this laptop deal offered and encouraged, but not required.

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Isn't that essentially the case? What's the punishment if you don't buy that dell?

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Just to play devil's advocate, cause I doubt they do anything to students that don't buy it, the document does say that it is "required". If their intention is to strongly recommend the device, they should do so without telling them it is required.

What is confusing is that later in the document it says the college "recommends" one of the following, which seems to be a deviation from the "required" language used above.

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The kickbacks must be sweet

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This x1000. A&M is already in bed with Dell for most everything on campus (or was just a few years ago).

2014 is recommended.

2015 is required.

I shopped yesterday and there are some HP's that are close in specs for under a thousand. I need to dig some more though. My son starts in the fall so I have some time.

Also, I think end of summer/back to school sales for laptops are pretty common

Haven't read the thread yet (it's late for me), but if a laptop is required, then I think it's tax deductible. I'll need to check into this further as the next kids approach college age.

it is tax deductible if required to take the courses. (The exceptions make it a gray area, but I'd take the deduction)

[This message has been edited by lockett93 (edited 4/24/2014 8:23p).]

This computer is overkill. Its better than my work laptop. We also have a server to push any CPU intensive calculations to. Im surprised they don't do the same thing since there are very few classes that would actually need this powerful of a PC.

Im also curious why they don't just give minimum specs for a laptop that all students. I guess they wouldn't get the discounted laptops.

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We also have a server to push any CPU intensive calculations to.

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I'm guessing that they want laptops to support doing some of these things during class time, as part of the "flip the classroom" trend. We just bought $19M worth of supercomputing capacity for TAMUS, but the problem with using it on this scale is less the computers than the bandwidth for connecting to them from classrooms. The campus wifi already gets overloaded and the times my colleagues have tried to use if for computer exercises that involve data transfer of any significant size, it's been a failure.

I've been in classrooms at other schools (UCSD, Wisconsin) where the lecture halls have cat5 jacks in every seat. That was sweet. Do any of the ENGR classrooms have that?

I believe I've seen jacks in ETB.

Todd that I what I thought as well. They over recommending for CYA. I'm going to shop the specs when it's time to buy, probably tax free weekend.

[This message has been edited by SteveBott (edited 4/25/2014 3:11p).]

I doubt I'm the first to think of the similarities, but...


Obamacare.