SCS Laptop Requirement

The School of Computer Science requires that you have a laptop that meets recommended hardware specifications. These hardware recommendations will allow you to have a laptop that is equipped for your Computer Science courses.

Please note the laptop requirement will only apply to any students who are physically taking courses on campus. At home, a desktop computer meeting the laptop specification is adequate.

Who is required to have a laptop?

Everyone enrolled in a 1st-year COMP course after the 2020/21 school year is required to have a laptop. This includes COMP 1001, 1005, and 1006. Students are expected to retain this laptop for use in subsequent years until the completion of their studies. Not all upper-year courses will require a laptop in class. For those that do, it will be noted in the course outline.

Laptop Specifications

PC or MAC laptops with the following minimum specifications:

CPU: Intel i5/i7/i9/Xeon or AMD Ryzen line
8 GB or more of RAM
256 GB or larger hard drive (SSD drive recommended)
wireless networking (WiFi)
camera, mic, and audio
current Windows, MacOS or Linux operating system

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

For the details on laptop requirements refer to:

Laptop Specifications

Tip: Looking to purchase a new laptop for the Computer Science program? Check out this helpful page so you can find the right one: Shopping for a new laptop for the Computer Science program

Stream Requirements

The following stream requires specialized hardware:

Computer Game Development Stream

The Computer Game Development Stream requires a Windows laptop and a GPU

The Computer Game Development Stream will be using DirectX that runs on Microsoft Windows. The laptop must include a GPU suitable to run recent PC games. There are no other requirements.

Laptop Requirement Links

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