Hello CEE Students –
We wanted to touch base with you about computer technology for Spring 2020. Below you will find a statement from our IT team with their tech recommendations to help you have a successful quarter.
If you have any questions about this information or have concerns, please email ceadvice@uw.edu.
In addition, we wanted to share a few resources to help you prepare for SPR20:
- Online Learning | College of Engineering
- Facts and information regarding spring quarter 2020 | Office of the Provost
- UW Tech Rentals
- UW Short Term Loan Program
- Novel coronavirus & COVID-19: facts and resources
Message from CEE IT:
As you prepare for spring quarter, we want to provide some basic guidelines for what laptop/computer characteristics may be best.
For civil and environmental Engineering, we’ve found that a Windows computer is preferable to an Apple one. The vast majority of engineering programs are written for Windows, and we get feedback from students with Macs when they aren’t able to do group projects, etc., because the software needed is Windows-only. One can of course, install Windows on a Mac as either a separate boot or in parallels, but unless there’s a need for some specific Apple-only application, it seems an unnecessary expense and effort to work around the Apple operating system.
With regards to memory, CPU, hard drive space and graphics, consider the
following:
* 16 gigs of ram. Lower than 16 present some performance issues with Windows 10. That said, higher than that is probably not useful in a laptop.
* Intel Core i5 or Core i7 series processors, depending on your needs. Stay away from i3s that are meant for ‘light lifting’. Core i7s, although more powerful and useful for some multimedia tasks such as video editing or CPU intensive applications, are overkill for users who will primarily be using MS Office and web browsing.
* Hard drive space is generally not much of an issue. The standard seems to be around 500 GB these days, and that’s plenty. Many laptops come with Solid State Drives (SSDs) and those are far faster, but at the expense of hard drive space. This normally isn’t a constraint as long as the user uses an external hard drive or cloud service for storage of large data.
* With regards to graphics processors, Intel’s line of built-in graphics chips is largely adequate for engineering tasks.
I hope this information was helpful and don’t hesitate to write back to
ceehelp@uw.edu with further questions.
CEE Undergraduate Advising
Civil & Environmental Engineering
College of Engineering
University of Washington
More Hall, Box 352700
CEE Advising Appointments
(Ensure your time zone is set to Pacific Standard Time)
**If you do not see a time that works with your schedule, please email ceadvice@uw.edu with your availability.