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Laptop Specification

The School of Computer Science laptop hardware requirements are as follows.

Summary Requirements

PC or MAC laptops with the following minimum specifications:

Computers such as Netbooks, Chromebooks, Smartphones or atom processors are not suitable for the Computer Science program

Detailed Recommendations

The detailed laptop hardware specifications are as follows. This will be particularly useful for anyone looking to purchase a new laptop.

Operating System
CPU
Memory
Disk Space
Networking
Videocard
Audio & Video
Miscellaneous

Operating System

The School of Computer Science does not require you to have a specific operating system on your laptop. You have a choice of:

as the native operating system on your laptop.

For the details on laptop operating systems refer to:

CPU

The Intel i5/i7/i9 or Intel Xeon or AMD Ryzen line CPUs are ideal for Computer Science laptops.

Please note Macs with the M1 processor do not support virtualization and therefore are not recommended for the Computer Science program (more info)

There are other CPUs that can be used for the laptop. The defining criteria is that the CPU supports virtualization:

Netbooks, Chromebooks, Smartphones or atom processors do not support virtualization and therefore do not qualify under these requirements.

CPU Notes:

Memory

Must have  8GB of RAM or more. If you have the budget we recommend 16 GB of RAM.

Note: There is no speed requirement for RAM

Disk Space

Strongly suggest you invest in a Solid State Drive (SSD) hard drive because of the superior performance.

Hard drive: 256GB or larger SSD

Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or “spinning drives” are better value per GB of disk space but perform slower than SSD drives

Networking

There is a USB 3.0 to ethernet adapter that you can purchase so you do not need an ethernet port on your laptop. The big benefit of ethernet is that it is more secure than WiFi, has better latency, throughput and fewer dropped connections.

Videocard

There are no video requirements (2.):

(2.) The video gaming stream requires you to have a video card that can run current games

External video ports are useful for group projects and presentations. When purchasing a laptop look for HDMI, display port or VGA ports.

For students in the Gaming development stream we recommend:

Audio & Video

Your laptop must be able to run video conferencing software like Big Blue Button and Microsoft Teams with sound and video. Your laptop must have:

An audio jack is useful so you can connect wired headphones.

Miscellaneous

Here are additional laptop features that you can look for:

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