First Year Supplies

Laptop Requirements

• All Engineering students need to have a laptop (not a tablet or chromebook) – the minimum recommended specifications are:

Intel i5 or AMD A10 processor;
8GB of RAM; and
512 GB SSD hard drive (Minimum, recommended 1TB)
wireless networking (wifi)
camera, mic, and audio
strongly recommended: portable battery charger that will provide one complete charge of your laptop

Students enrolled in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering programs (Aerospace, Mechanical, Biomedical and Mechanical, and Sustainable and Renewable Energy – Stream B) will require a dedicated graphics card with at least 2 GB of dedicated memory, such as the NVIDIA GTX 1050 or higher, to support graphics-intensive design software used in upper-year courses.

Students enrolled in the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering programs (Software, Computer Systems, Communications, and Biomedical Electrical) will require MS Windows or Linux laptops for software used in SYSC courses. Apple Mac systems are not recommended and are not supported by the department, but can be used with the assistance of appropriate virtualization software, either by purchasing a (student) copy of Parallels (supports Intel and M-series CPU) for Mac, or by using VirtualBox (for Intel CPU only). Additionally, students enrolled in Computer Systems Engineering should have at least 350 GB of available disk space to install some required course software.

Students enrolled in the Department of Electronics programs (Electrical Engineering, Engineering Physics, and Sustainable and Renewable Energy – Stream A) will require MS Windows or Linux laptop for software used in upperyear ELEC courses. Apple Mac systems can be used with the assistance of using Virtual Box (free, only supports Intel chipset), or by purchasing a (student) copy of Parallels (supports Intel and M1 chipsets) for Mac. Please note the department does not support MacOS systems – more information regarding DOE laptop requirements can be found HERE.

 

Other School Supplies

• Calculator – non-programmable scientific
• Agenda and/or planner and a monthly calendar for writing out due dates, test dates, and reminders of tasks for each day/week
• Binders and some loose leaf and graphing paper (whichever you prefer)
• If you plan to print slides to add in your lecture notes, a printer and ink
• Pencil case filled with mechanical pencils, eraser, pens, highlighters, post-it’s, ruler, and geometry set
• Download the Carleton Mobile app
• Microsoft 365: free from Carleton ITS