The Durham School suggests obtaining a computer with the following features:
- Most incoming students now use a laptop for portability.
- CPU: Core i7 or better
- Minimum 16 GB of RAM is advised; more RAM will improve performance for large building models.
- Disk: 512 GB minimum (Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) SSD drives recommended)
- Windows 11
- Display: 1920x1080 minimum resolution
- Graphics Card: A discrete NVIDIA GPU is recommended as it is most compatible with video rendering. A good gaming machine is also usually a reasonable computer-aided design machine.
- An external monitor for home use is advised.
- Wifi adapter (Wi-Fi 7 is the latest)
- A good warranty is an advantage. You may want to consider next-day service to lessen the amount of time you may have to be without your computer. It usually costs more, but can pay for itself with peace of mind versus lost productivity.
- In case something does happen, you should have an external hard drive or cloud-based backup.
- Many software vendors have free or low-cost licenses for student academic software. It is likely best to wait until you are on campus, to obtain discipline-specific software.
- Apple products do not natively run many important applications used in the School.
The university has a purchase agreement with Dell; however, you should also check prices elsewhere for optional pricing and features. With sales, specials, and/or coupons, sometimes the price is less.
The UNL HuskerTech is at: UNL Computer Shop