Is anybody planning on getting a new labtop for school? Any recommendations/comments? I'm not very tech-savvy...
This is really something of personal preference depending on what you want to use it for. If you already have a desktop, you might want something smaller and lighter. If it will be your only computer you might want a larger screen and a processor with more power. And there are some people in our class and they only use their desktops and they said they've managed pretty well all year.
What you'll need a computer for:
1. To view histo lab images given to you on a cd and a portable hard drive. In histo lab you will be required to keep an electronic "portfolio" of images given to you on a portable hard drive. Some people choose to stay after the histo labs with their laptop and Dr. King will help you select and label images which is extremely helpful. The people who stay after tend to do very well on the images portion of the histo exams. So if you think you might be one of these people, you will need a laptop.
2. Anatomy gives your a Galen cd that is full of questions over each lecture. There will be a weekly quiz given that will contain questions verbatim from the cd. You must get 7 out of 10 correct for a pass and you are allowed 2 fails over the year. There is no reason to fail these quizzes, just do all the questions. And some tend to pop up on exams so it's helpful in prepping for the exam too. There is also a cd of x-rays they'll give you. I prefer this to standing in the hall of the anatomy lab staring at really old placards placed either too high or too low to read.
3. Neuro starts in the spring and has a large self-study component. The neuro cd they give with your syllabus should be a huge study resource for you. It also has Galen-like questions that you can use to study for exams.
4. Some people like to type up notes in class . . . I only tried this briefly for histo, but I found it wasn't helpful for me.
I have a desktop and the Dell XPS M1210. I love mine. It's super light, 12.1" dual core processor. And since the XPS line came out the Inspiron lines are super cheap and still really good computers. I bring my computer to school on days that I know I'll want to study histo, anatomy, or neuro in the library. Although it's worthwhile to note that there are computer labs in the library that you can use. Just pop your cd in and you're set.
There seem to be quite a few Mac users here. I don't know a whole lot about them. The Galen cd is kind of picky anyway, but I think one of my Mac-using friends cannot view the table of contents that tells you which lecture number to bring up, but he can use all of the questions. He just asks me which lectures correspond to each number. I'm not really sure about compatibility issues with the other software we use.
The school does offer a dell laptop that seems to have more power than my gaming laptop (completely unneccessary for the software they expect you to run). In my opinion, it's a bit overpriced.
Some people highly recommend getting the extended warranty with stupid insurance. After all you will likely be sleep-deprived, stressed out, and angry at some point in the next four years and it's nice to know that if you drive away with your laptop on top of your car, it's covered.
🙂
And one more thing, if you are going to be buying something new, most come with a free printer. A printer would actually be a nice thing to have. You'll most likely want to print out all of the physiology lecture slides since the syllabus is more of a list of objectives rather than notes like every other class. Most people print out the lecture slides and stick that in their notebook and use it like syllabus notes. The library charges 10 cents/pg.
Hope that helps some.
