Minimum Laptop Requirements - Touro University California



To: Touro University: COM and COP Students

From: Richard Hornstein, Curriculum Support Specialist for the COP (College of Pharmacy)

Email: richard.hornstein@tu.edu

Phone: (707) 638-5939

Jeffery Reedy, Educational Technologist for the COM (College of Osteopathic Medicine)

Email: jeff.reedy@tu.edu

Phone: (707) 638-5238

Welcome to the Touro College Laptop Program

This notification is to inform you of our laptop minimum requirements and for Touro to better learn your current computer provisions and personal requirements.

Who Will Help You? :

Pharmacy Curriculum Support Services, headed by Richard Hornstein (richard.hornstein@tu.edu) and COM Educational Technologist, Jeffery Reedy (jeff.reedy@tu.edu) will be administrating this program with the counsel of faculty, student, and administrative personnel.

Laptop Program Objectives:

Student utilized laptop computers will empower students and faculty to access primary and supportive information to better prepare for and supplement the learning process.

Blackboard, an electronic learning tool, will be utilized as the central component of the “electronic classroom” employed throughout much of the curriculum. Blackboard is not resident on the laptop but is simply a web address to our servers at Touro. Because of this, students will be able to access materials from any location with web access. Assignments, course material, assessments, and collaborative tools will be commonly available to students and faculty; independent of their location.

The lecture areas offer a wireless environment enabling accessibility to informational resources via the Internet and proprietary Touro sites such as the Library and other University resources.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS. Please check that your laptop hardware and software meet each requirement.

Software Requirements:

The operating system requirement is Windows XP (Home or Pro) or Vista (do not get the “Basic” version; get Home Premium or better). An antivirus suite is required; i.e. Avast!.

Students are expected to have working knowledge of the applications of the MS Office Suite: Word, Excel and PowerPoint. If you are having any issues or questions about your laptop, we encourage you to contact the Curriculum Support Specialist or Educational Technologist prior to the first day of class. MS Office 2003 with Office 2007 compatibility pack installed is acceptable for Windows XP. The compatibility pack can be downloaded here. For 32 bit versions of Windows Vista or 7, Office 2007 is acceptable. If you are using Windows 7 64 bit, Office 2010 is recommended. The release date is targeted for June 2010.

Hardware Requirements:

| |

|For all laptops: |

|Processor Manufacturer: |Intel or Advanced Micro Devices |

|Network Interface Card: |10/100 802.11b/g wireless |

|Hard-drive capacity: |40 GB or greater |

|For Windows 7/Vista: |(Home Premium or better; Business is recommended) |

|Memory: |2 GB (3 GB or more strongly recommended)* |

|Processor Speed: |1.4 GHz or greater (2 GHz recommended) |

|For Windows XP: |(Home or Pro editions) |

|Memory: |512 MB or greater (1 GB is recommended) |

|Processor Speed: |1 Ghz or faster |

* To enable memory capacity greater than 3 GB of ram you will need to have a 64 bit version of Windows.

Tablet PCs are also acceptable provided they meet the requirements. They are an optional component. A laptop with these specifications should cost between $1200 - $1800 for College of Medicine; depending on memory and hard drive size and whether it has a CD/DVD writer (not required, but recommended). Students should also purchase an external hard drive to backup their data (highly recommended). Net PCs such as the models from ASUS with Windows XP and Office are also acceptable. They can be a low cost alternative to a regular Laptop (Costing around $350-$450). Apple iPads do not constitute a fully operational workstation meeting minimum requirements.

Laptop Acquisition:

Student may choose to use their existing laptops or purchase one providing they meet the listed minimum requirements.

Laptops from these manufacturers are acceptable:

Sony, DELL, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Panasonic, Lenovo, ASUS and Gateway. At this time we are not recommending Compaq/HP.

We also recommend that students purchase extended warrantees or service contracts should there be a hardware failure. Students may elect to purchase laptops from their favorite retail outlet.

Laptop Support:

Should an OS reinstall be required because your laptop no longer functions correctly, having the system restore disks will greatly speed the restoration of your laptop. If you don’t have the restore disks and a special partition is not on the laptop with recovery tools, we recommend you to contact the manufacturer to obtain them. There is generally no or a very little charge for the disks. We will support software related issues with the Operating System, Word, Excel, the wireless configuration, diagnostics, re-imaging a laptop and/or file recovery.

Hardware related failures need to be addressed by the student and the appropriate manufacturer service center. We will help by letting you know if the issue is hardware or software.

Laptop Orientation:

During the orientation week, preceding the start of the semester, laptops and other technology will be addressed as to wireless access and Blackboard usage. Issues, such as installing the compatibility pack, can be addressed at that time.

Notes for using Office 2007:

When working with previous versions of Office documents, Office 2007 maintains a compatibility mode which is enabled automatically when opening any prior version of documents. This mode will allow the saving of documents without conversion. It should be noted that when creating new documents to be shared, those documents may need to be saved in an older format to be compatible with other versions of Office. The best way to accomplish this is to change the default save format. Do the following to enable this feature:

1. Click on the Office button

2. Click on the Options button in the lower right corner of the window

3. Select Save

4. For Save Files in this format, click on the down arrow and select 97-2003 (in Word, '97-2003 document (*.doc))

Additional tips for sharing documents with others:

• Use the Save As option in Office 2007 to save a single document in 97-2003 (older) format

• Save a Word document as an RTF (Rich Text Format). This is very useful if you don't know whether the person you're exchanging documents with even has Office in any version. RTF will retain most formatting, including margins, tabs, tables, bold, italics, etc

• Save a document as a PDF file. Remember Office 2007 now has an add-in which adds the ability to save documents in PDF format (Instructions for getting the PDF add-in are located at this address: ).

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