Answers 1-4
1. Are students in the Department of Design and Communication Technology required to have their own laptop for classes?
Beginning in the Fall 2008* semester, all CGT, ART, and INTR students who are ranked as Freshmen, Sophomores, or Juniors will be required
to have their own on-demand** laptop which they will use in all lab based classes. Seniors who are within 24 hours of graduation, or who have completed all
their lab based classes, will not be required to have an on-demand laptop.
*Effective in the Fall 2008 semester, all courses which have lab sessions in the CGT, ART, and INTR programs will be taught only in laptop labs where other computers will not be available.
**“On-demand” is the term used to imply that a laptop must be brought by, and available to, each student in every lab session.
2. What advantage does having my own laptop afford me as a student?
Students with a laptop will be able to work on CG related projects either on or off campus outside of their regularly scheduled university lab sessions.
Therefore, students will no longer need to depend on being able to find an open seat in a computer lab when they wish to work on their assignments. As a
beginning professional in training who desires to work in a visually demanding field, you will have access 24 hours a day to an essential piece of equipment
you will use throughout your career.
3. Will DCT students who already own a laptop be allowed to use it in their lab sessions?
Students who already own laptops are welcome to use them in all lab sessions if the laptop has the minimal memory and operating standards required for the software
used in the course. All laptop labs will be equipped with power outlets and hard wire Internet lines that may be used by students to power their laptop and
connect it to the Internet.
4. How do I know if the laptop I now own will be powerful enough to be used in my lab classes?
Laptops which have the minimum equipment and operating standards shown below will be satisfactory to ensure successful use in all the DCT programs:
- 80 GB hard-drive (100+ GB hard-drive is recommended)
- 1 GB of RAM (2+ GB of RAM is recommended)
- Optical 3 button mouse (1 button should be a scrolling wheel)
- DVD +/- RW/CD-RW USB port (at least one port is essential – multiple ports are highly recommended)
- 15 inch screen is adequate (17 inch screen is highly recommended)
- 128 MB of video RAM (256 MB of RAM is recommended) (NOTE: Students who anticipate going into the Spatial Graphics/Animation track, or who wish to use high end 3D applications (this includes INT/ART students), should ensure their laptops come with either an Nvidia G-Force, or an ATI Radeon, video card.)
- Network card for attaching the laptop to the Internet is required (Wireless capability is not required due to the fact that each laptop lab will have hard wire access to the Internet in each lab, however, wireless capability is highly recommended.)
