I bought a Dell Inspiron 3700 in August, and I've been using it in my course for all lectures this year. I know it's not THE nicest one on the market (or actually off the market and this stage), but it was all that I could afford allowing it to have a DVD movie player;)
In all my university, I am among the very few who are doing this - the only one in my class. I find it convenient. I'm doing an Electronic Engineering course and there's a good bit of text which I'm better off using the computer for because I write real slow and can type fast. The diagrams are easy to get down with Microsoft Word's built in tools. I've also got a quick way of getting mathematical formulaes and symbols down. Unfortunately, it has crashed 3 times this year already. I get some I told you so looks from other students, and had to use a pen and paper until class was over! My University (UCD - Dublin) did not let me connect the computer to the college network (only staff and post graduates get to do it), so I have to use the campus computers for internet - everything including e-mail gets saved to Zip disk for transfer to Laptop. Overall I'm sticking with it. I'll have to study on the computer screen because the reason I'm doing this is to have no paper cluttering up my place (I won't print them out near the end). It's heavy for a laptop, but I get it into class alright. Although, the carrier bag Dell gave me is far from ideal to use when cycling - it cuts off the blood circulation to the side of the body it's leaning on!
If anyone is about to do the same thing, I'd like to help them out. I've got a website I'll be making for a few weeks on laptop use in lectures, url below. I searched the net and didn't find anything relevant - I'm sure that there must be, so is anybody aware of sites that have already done this? I'd welcome any suggestions(and comments) to add to the site.
Cheers,
Benny
benny@irishstudent.com
http://www.netsoc.ucd.ie/~benny/index.htm (Under construction)
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I bought a Dell Inspiron 3700 in August, and I've been using it in my course for all lectures this year. I know it's not THE nicest one on the market (or actually off the market and this stage), but it was all that I could afford allowing it to have a DVD movie player ;)
In all my university, I am among the very few who are doing this - the only one in my class. I find it convenient. I'm doing an Electronic Engineering course and there's a good bit of text which I'm better off using the computer for because I write real slow and can type fast. The diagrams are easy to get down with Microsoft Word's built in tools. I've also got a quick way of getting mathematical formulaes and symbols down. Unfortunately, it has crashed 3 times this year already. I get some I told you so looks from other students, and had to use a pen and paper until class was over! My University (UCD - Dublin) did not let me connect the computer to the college network (only staff and post graduates get to do it), so I have to use the campus computers for internet - everything including e-mail gets saved to Zip disk for transfer to Laptop. Overall I'm sticking with it. I'll have to study on the computer screen because the reason I'm doing this is to have no paper cluttering up my place (I won't print them out near the end). It's heavy for a laptop, but I get it into class alright. Although, the carrier bag Dell gave me is far from ideal to use when cycling - it cuts off the blood circulation to the side of the body it's leaning on!
If anyone is about to do the same thing, I'd like to help them out. I've got a website I'll be making for a few weeks on laptop use in lectures, url below. I searched the net and didn't find anything relevant - I'm sure that there must be, so is anybody aware of sites that have already done this? I'd welcome any suggestions(and comments) to add to the site.
Cheers,
Benny
benny@irishstudent.com
http://www.netsoc.ucd.ie/~benny/index.htm (Under construction)