I'm looking to buy a laptop this year.
The buy just got urgent as I have found out the lecture theatre I'm supposed to lecture in does not have a computer in it!!!!! Just the peripherals like the data projector (and overhead projector probably). So, if I want to give a lecture using powerpoint rather than old OHTs, I must provide my own computer.
So what should I be looking for?
I think I'd like it to be reasonably fast. Powerpoints can run really slow on the older desktops if you use images (I do)...so maybe I should avoid celeron processors. I'll also probably store scanned photos on it for my family history stuff. I'm unlikely to game on it though.
Any suggestions from the notebook literate?
3 comments:
You could always buy yourself a new intel-based MacBookPro (awful name but sweet computer). Apparently you can now boot into Windows if you need to, and it would seem to be faster than other intel based notebooks. Of course, it ain't cheap. But it does appear to be an ensouled* computer, so you get what you pay for ;-)
*read the advertising copy!
What should you be looking for? You should be looking for your employer to provide you with a computer to do your job with properly! If you use overheads instead of powerpoint your students will just throw crusts of bread at you and mock you, sending streaming video footage of your lectures to 'worlds_most_neolithic_lecturers.com' and insisting on submitting all their assessment in Latin so you can read it.
So, get all that advertising copy, assume whiny hard-done-by academic mode (I can give you some pointers) and go on the scrounge!
I have been offered the loan of various academics laptops (as they also had to buy their own), so the uni should pay for it argument will fall on deaf ears. Why pay for mine when they wouldn't pay for tenured position laptops - and those tenured laptops are now available to me.
I also cannot salary sacrifice to get one and pay less tax - the university has a "policy" in which you need to have a 2year plus contract to be allowed to salary sacrifice.
I'm sceptical about Macs, not that I don't know that they;
1. run better
2. are more flexible
3. don't get virused
But I've invested so much time in figuring out how microsoft programs run, I live in fear of having to do it with Macs.
Plus the university is vary anti-mac for some reason so support is low and I'm betting if I plug my mac into a dataprojector, chances are it won't work because they've set something up incompatable with macs. Then when I ask for help about it, they'll say "you should have got XP, its compatable with XP"
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