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Student Laptop Support
Recommended System Configuration

If you need to purchase a laptop for use at New England School of Law, here's the recommended configuration.

 

  • Processor: Pentium 4, Pentium M or Centrino-M ( not Celeron! )

  • Memory: 1GB for Windows XP, 2 GB for *Windows Vista

  • Operating System: Windows XP Professional, with Service Pack 2 installed. *Windows Vista: Ultimate, Business, or Home Premium ( not Home Basic! )

  • Anti-Virus Software: You need to be running fully updated anti-virus software such as Symantec or McAfee before connecting to our network. If you do not have this there are free options available on the internet such as AVG AntiVirus found at http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1 , or avast! 4 Home at http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html .

  • Anti-Spyware Software: Microsoft provides a pretty good free Anti-Spyware program called Windows Defender available at http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx (note that Windows Defender will not work with Windows 2000). There are several good subscription based software packages one could purchase as well such as CounterSpy ( http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Home-Home-Office/CounterSpy/Download/ ) or Spy Sweeper ( http://www.webroot.com/ ).

  • Network Adapter: 802.11g integrated wireless card

  • Applications: Microsoft Office 2003.

  • USB Flash Drive (a.k.a. Thumb Drive, Pen Drive) for backing up your data. These have become inexpensive enough that 1GB capacity would be recommended. The actual capacity you buy depends on what sort of files you want to back up. Just your documents or music & photos as well?

*Caveat Emptor: What you should know about Windows Vista.

If you think you might want to upgrade to Windows Vista, having 2GB of memory (RAM) would be best as well as a dedicated video card with at least 128MB of video RAM. However an "upgrade" is not really recommended as it can often turn into a real can of worms. A fresh install of any operating system is always preferable over an upgrade. If you do want to put Windows Vista on an existing computer be sure to first run the "Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor" to check for any hardware/software incompatibilities. You can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx .

Many new low priced PCs will sport the claim "Vista Capable". Essentially this means that they will be able to run the "Home Basic" version of Windows Vista and not necessarily run it very well. The other marketing tag used by Microsoft is "Vista Premium Ready" which identifies a machine that will provide a better minimum configuration for the end user. You can read more about this at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/capable.mspx .

Historically Microsoft‘s "minimum system requirements" for operating systems (and other software) are at the extreme low end of what they seem to define as software actually running (i.e. Sure it runs? about like molasses on a cold day). One always wants to go a fair bit above what they deem as "minimum".

The Windows Vista interface is different enough from Windows XP that most users, especially power users, will have to relearn how to do many tasks that have become second nature in the XP or 2000 environment.

Minimum System Configuration

We support the following minimum computer configurations which you can use to connect to the campus-wide network.

 

  • Processor (CPU): Pentium III, at least 1 GHz

  • Operating System: MS Windows 2000 (with Service Pack 4)

  • Memory: 512 MB RAM

  • Storage: 40 GB internal hard drive

  • CD-ROM: CD-RW

  • Monitor/Display: 12" color monitor

Mac Users

Although Windows XP and Windows 2000 are the recommended, fully and officially supported operating systems here, we have several Macintosh computer users at the law school. The IT support staff tries to help out whenever possible, but support is limited. We will be working to increase support for Macs on campus.

Services that are available to Mac users are:

 

  • Access to E-Mail

  • Wireless Internet Connectivity

  • Printing

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