Program-Specific Info / Q's Requirements for owning a computer?

[CurlyHairedGirl]

I was wondering if anyone knows if their school (or the schools they have applied to) have a technology requirement to own a laptop. Some schools want you to do group projects and presumably having your laptop along would be helpful. I know at least one school (ACU) that provides students with a leased iPad as part of the tuition bill.

I've never been a big fan of laptops. I had a couple jobs where my laptop was provided as my primary computer and I had a docking station at work. I was supposed to carry the laptop back and forth so I could work from home if needed. I don't like touchpads. The arrangement of the keyboard above the touchpad with a low screen is not a good ergonomic configuration for working for long periods of time. It's not as bad for men, because they have wider shoulders and longer arms, but it is much worse for women.

So I have an Android tablet that I use periodically at school, or if I want to study in bed/on the couch, and then a 5 year old windows desktop PC at home. The issue is, the desktop PC is having some serious issues. Too many websites use Flash, which makes my computer use up a lot of memory and my browser windows hang. For a while I thought it just needed to be rebuilt, but I'm getting Blue Screen of Death windows crashes regularly now. Some of you are probably so young that you don't remember the days before Windows XP when windows PCs crashed a lot, with a blue screen giving an error message.

Anyways, I'm trying to hold off on buying a new PC until I know which school I'm going to and what they recommend. I'm always close to filling up my 500 GB hard drive, so I wanted to buy a desktop PC because having a large hard drive is a lot cheaper on a desktop. Getting a laptop that met my specifications would be over $1000. Whereas a PC would be only $500-600.

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[c2902]

My program, which is a hybrid program and therefore relies on internet access, issues us a Macbook and an iPad which is paid for as a part of tuition; it's mandatory and you cannot opt out to try to save money. At the end of the program, we can either return or buy out the devices. The whole school actually does this for all students (at least the laptop, I know). It's supposedly so we can all be on the same operating system, so no one experiences issues with Blackboard (though I did most of my prereqs online via Bb on my PC laptop and it was fine). Obviously, I have to bring it to class, so I use it to do all of my schoolwork. I don't hate the Macbook, though I don't use the tablet all that much - it's mostly for fun.

For what it's worth, I'm 33, I remember what life was like before the internet (didn't get a PC until I was 12 and no internet/email until I was 17) and I definitely had a gigantic Compaq desktop as my college dorm room computer. It took me until 2010 to finally upgrade to a laptop after being issued one at work (I had a Dell desktop at home for several years after the Compaq died, but it eventually got a virus and crashed and the processor was so slow that it wasn't worth saving). It really wasn't a bad switch, and you absolutely do not have to spend $1000 for a laptop, though I'm not exactly sure what you're doing that would use up the entire memory on a computer - you certainly won't be doing anything in OT school that requires that. You may want to back up things like photos, etc to an external hard drive to free up some space.

 

[CurlyHairedGirl]

I'm really into music and have 150 GB of MP3's. Since I didn't have cable or a decent TV for a long time, I bought my favorite TV show from Amazon or iTunes. I'm also on my fourth computer and have kept most of the data from previous computers since I was never sure what I needed or where it was stored. I've downloaded a lot of iTunesU videos/audio recordings and used to play anatomy lectures while driving. As of 2 years ago, they didn't have any OT classes on there but I think they had OTA or PTA lectures.

I've got an external drive, but I've also got experience of putting what at the time was 2/3 of my MP3 collection, all my favorite swing jazz, onto an external drive, then losing the data.

The version of iTunes that you play on your computer has a lot of memory leaks.

I can't stand listening to the same song regularly, and I'm pretty sure that out of the 30,000 MP3's I've got I have some that I've never listened to since I've digitized them. Like classic rock or new wave I listened to when growing up. But now Depeche Mode is too slow and boring.

Running iTunes, videos of something I'm doing for an online class, word documents of something I was working on, excel still open from something else, 5 different large PDF documents, a web browser with 30 tabs, is typical of what I usually do, and I tend to leave my computer up all the time. I go weeks/months between reboots unless something comes up. I've installed so much crap on my computer over the past 5 years for different hobbies/projects (as somebody working in IT) that the OS and registry are pretty cluttered up.

What happened almost 2 years ago was that I was working on something for school during a thunderstorm. We had a 1 second power outage, which was enough to crash the computer. I waited a couple minutes, then booted up the computer again. It was about halfway started when the power cut off again and stayed off for several hours. Luckily I was still employed and had my work laptop and found someplace where they had power and wireless.

Anyways, my point there was that my computer never worked quite right after that. Microsoft Office crashed a lot up until I ran some diagnostics much later. Most of my classes have had some online component or need to write papers, so I've never had a couple weeks to be disconnected from the world to back everything up and rebuild the OS. Also wasn't sure where the OS discs were.