Do i need a laptop and what do I need on it?

[homm_town11]

Hey guys,

Got in, congrats to all others and good luck to those still waiting.

Just wondering, I am planning on gettin a laptop, but im waiting to see if there are certain requirements in terms of features, software, etc., as i know ottawa makes u buy some $3000 piece of garbage. Is there anything like that for UWO? or will a standard acer laptop suffice?

Thanks

[Dante]

No particular requirements were given to us. There are the occasional assignments that require you to run uber-crappy software on your computer (or use school computers to do so - mostly an issue of you've got a mac) but these are really minor things. Buy whatever you like.

[Darla]

I agree with Dante. Also good to know, right now we have a computer lab in London for student use, but that goes under construction very soon and will be under renovation all summer. The lab may still be under construction in September so having your own computer couldn't hurt. First block has been online independent learning heavy over the past 2 years.

[Pantaloons]

Both Ottawa and NOSM will have their students using Tablet PCs next year.

 

Do you think there's a significant advantage to having a Tablet to write on during lectures etc.?

 

I guess it's not that big of a deal, but I'm curious.

Thanks.

[~me~]

No particular requirements were given to us. There are the occasional assignments that require you to run uber-crappy software on your computer (or use school computers to do so - mostly an issue of you've got a mac) but these are really minor things. Buy whatever you like.

 

Hmm, I have a Mac ... Would it be worthwhile bringing my old PC with me? Or can these assignments be done at a university computer fairly easily?

 

Thanks!

[greatgefilte]

Hey guys,

Got in, congrats to all others and good luck to those still waiting.

Just wondering, I am planning on gettin a laptop, but im waiting to see if there are certain requirements in terms of features, software, etc., as i know ottawa makes u buy some $3000 piece of garbage. Is there anything like that for UWO? or will a standard acer laptop suffice?

Thanks

 

No need for anything too fancy. A tablet is handy if you prefer taking notes that way, but I've noticed a lot of people going the netbook route (e.g. an Eee PC or something similar). Just please, please don't be one of those people who uses class time to do your banking, check Facebook, look for porn, etc. It can be really distracting to the people sitting around you! (Ahem, not pointing fingers at anyone in particular, but I know you're out there )

[ploughboy]

Both Ottawa and NOSM will have their students using Tablet PCs next year.

 

Do you think there's a significant advantage to having a Tablet to write on during lectures etc.?

 

I guess it's not that big of a deal, but I'm curious.

Thanks.

 

Hey,

 

I picked up a pretty sweet little TC1100 (HP/Compaq tablet) for $500 on eBay and used it during 4th year "back-to-basics" (NB: the TC1000/TC1100 product line underwent many revisions during their manufacturing lifetime, and you have to know how to read HP part numbers to make sure you're buying a good machine, and not a slow, hot brick). During 1st/2nd year I took notes on my pda, when I wasn't sitting at the back of the class drinking coffee and doing the crossword in the newspaper. If I'd been on the ball and had the money to afford the TC1100 new (instead of buying it used) I would have likely gotten a lot of use out of it during 1st/2nd year as well.

 

I'd say I used the TC1100 as a standard laptop about 2/3 of the time, and used it as a tablet 1/3 of the time. How I used it really depended on the content of the lecture. It was *very nice* to sit in a radiology lecture and annotate the films as the lecturer was pointing things out. (It wasn't $3000 nice, but it was $500 nice and I like doing cool things with not-state-of-the-art hardware.) Some other lectures seemed to feature lots of graphs and diagrams, and the tablet function was handy then, too. In other classes, I just typed.

 

As for operating systems, I made it through the whole curriculum using a combination of Kubuntu and OpenBSD. But...I'm a huge nerd! There were one or two other people in the class who used a flavour of *nix , but the rest were split approx 50/50 between Mac and PC. A bunch of people bought netbooks during the last few months of class, to replace the big and out-dated laptops they'd used in first/second year.

 

Long story short, what you use really depends on your personal circumstances. I get excited about tablets and nerdy operating systems and made a concerted effort to avoid paper-based notes during med school, so I went with what I knew and liked. Other people want something that Just Works, and were happy with their Macs. Still others wanted the same type of inexpensive hardware that their friends were using, and bought Dells (NB: Dell used to have a "medical student" discount. If you're thinking of going that route, it would be worthwhile to check it out).

 

Hope that helps!

 

pb

 

PS - I have had many MSN and Facebook conversations during lecture with people a few rows away! I'm also the type of guy who, when a professor includes a citation on one of his/her slides, will look up the original paper during the lecture. No high-finance or porn, though!

 

Having done my first undergraduate degree in an era when "accessing the Internet" meant "going to a lab full of 386s running Windows 3.1" I'm constantly gob-smacked by the way technology has shaped the delivery of education.