Is it compulsory to have a laptop at Jacobs? Can I survive without a laptop?
No, it is not compulsory to have one. It is your choice, but you need a laptop for many things, it is difficult if you don’t have one. There are laptops in the library of the university which you can use, but they are not many and all of them are not available 24/7 of course. Theoretically, you can survive without a laptop, but it is highly recommended to have one as you need to communicate with others and do projects, homework and stuff. A lot of the things regarding to the course material and homework are posted on internet. So, practically-no way!
If my operating system collapsed, what should I do?
On campus, we have the IT Support, who are very kind and can try to recover all your lost information in case your system collapsed. This however would be only if you bought the laptop from the university and not if you bought it from external places.
Is it worth it to bring my own laptop?
This depends solely on you. The problem would be the warranty, which, usually cannot be applied in other countries. So, if you know you’ll take good care of your portable, it is ok to bring your own, but otherwise, it is recommended to get one from the university given the fact that the insurance covers everything except theft.
How about buying one from Germany?
You can even buy a laptop from Germany. There are good stores for electronics here in Bremen, for example Saturn. But of course there can be some disadvantages for some of you as well, like for example a German keyboard and German software (which you can reinstall in English of course).
Where can I buy additional stuff for my laptop (i.e. external hard drives, webcams, mice, keyboards, etc.)?
There are several places to get this kind of stuffone would be the MediaMarkt, at the Vegesack Mall, or if you want to compare prices and even more utilities, go to Bremen downtown at Saturn and you have plenty of things to choose from. OR, you can send a spam to Jacobs-students and eventually someone has something to sell and you can get it cheaper (even though second hand) from one of the other students and you don’t even have to go that far.
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Just to correct something, the IT Support is not responsible for recovering data at all! The same goes for the student IT Support. Also unless you buy a Dell laptop from Jacobs, you will not get any support whatsoever. There are always helpful people around, but don't rely on it, and don't complain when you don't get any help.
ReplyDeleteAlso you will not legally be allowed to install a different language version of the operating system, if you buy a laptop with a German operating system for example. Don't expect the IT Support (also student IT Support) to install an illegal version or to help you acquire a legal one as well.
ReplyDeleteCan anybody here give me a sense of what exactly laptops are used for on campus? For example, do you bring your own laptops to CS classes or do you use public machines for programming and so on? Do you use your laptops for other courses?
ReplyDeleteI'm asking because I'm not really sure if I need a such an expensive laptop if I'm only going to use it for typing papers. Especially since I'm planning on bringing my own PC anyway.
well well well, lets give you one of my typical Jacobs Day laptop usage :
ReplyDelete1. I get up, check my email , loads of new announcements, registration emails, personal emails and so on.. reply to them and work out things that need to be done, put stuff in my google calender over new appointments.
2. I take my laptop to the class, well its the Adv CS class so you need the laptop to entertain you while the professor gives the lecture.
3. You come back and realise you need to go to a team/group meeting for the project. Pack the laptop and there you go.
I have to make a presentation and work with audio video and all the stuff, ohh and i need to do that with the other group members, well i better take my laptop with me.
4. Evening, i want to watch a movie in the c3 multimedia room. But well i need a laptop to connect to it. So well yea.
5. Loads of notes, lecture slides and file folders from clubs,etc ... aah my laptop comes to my rescue.
6. Well i need to print my stuff, better have the drivers installed on the laptop so that i can use the printers.
7. Oh i am tired, ill go up the common room and play some games with friends (or in my room), so well there i am with my laptop.
8. The professor posted multimedia notes on the course page, i need to get it to be able to follow him in the class. laptop to the rescue again.
In short, you will be surprised at how much would this laptop be of use to you in every part of your day. And i am not exaggerating when i say that. Ofcourse you do not need a very expensive laptop for all this. But ofcourse you need a laptop and one with basic wireless,multimedia,office and LAN capabilities to survive. A bit more if your a CS major maybe.. :)
oh and i forgot, for most labs you need your laptops with you. There are ofcourse computers in the labs (like CS labs and so) but having your laptops is necessary sometimes ( like in EE labs) or so for making your reports, calculations and so on.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your reply! So basically as long as I don't want to play too many games, a Celeron machine would be enough? A Core Duo (like the one from Dell) sounds a bit like overkill for the things you described.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I will be doing Bioinformatics, so I should have some CS courses.
Yes that should be fine. The criteria of Gaming is one that itself puts a lot of new requirements in a laptop search. Without it a core duo with 1 gb ram (512 works too) and a decent graphics card/lan/wireless card can be perfectly fine.
ReplyDeleteI would appreciate if you could set up a website with details of all the laptops that I can buy from Jacobs University.
ReplyDeleteI will do Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). Therefore, I will need a powerful laptop with lots of Ram.
jacobs university provides only one laptop deal from dell as a standard offer. More details on the same can be found at http://teamwork.jacobs-university.de
ReplyDelete