Monmouth University - Personal Computer Recommendations for Computer Science and Software Engineering Students

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Howard Hall

Room 219

(2nd level of Howard Hall)

Monmouth University

West Long Branch, NJ 07764

Phone:732-571-7501

Fax:732-263-5253

General Inquiries

Roseanne Gunter

Patricia Lamarca

Department Chair

Jiacun Wang

CS Undergraduate Director

Allen Milewski

CS Graduate Director (acting)

Richard Scherl

SE Undergraduate Director

Allen Milewski

SE Graduate Director

Daniela Rosca

IT Program Director (acting)

Bill Byrne

Personal Computer Recommendations for Computer Science and Software Engineering Students

Hardware Recommendations

The CSSE Department does not have any “official” requirement for students' PCs or laptops. The following are some recommendations for CSSE student computers.

CSSE students successfully use a wide variety of personal desktop computers and laptops running Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Apple Mac OS. One thing to be aware of is that many CSSE classes require students to develop their programming code to be executable on CSSE lab systems and servers, most specifically our Linux systems. The surest way to make your code executable on CSSE systems is to make your computer capable of remotely accessing CSSE systems.

The CSSE Department recommends a computer with sufficient RAM and storage space to run your chosen operating system comfortably. The system requirements are generally higher for Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS than for Linux, so if you have an older system that appears sluggish in Windows you may have more success running Linux on it and using it for code development. In general, the following minimum criteria are recommended for CSSE students:

Any Intel Pentium 4, Pentium M, Core/Dual Core, or Celeron running at 1.5Ghz or higher
Any AMD Athlon, Opteron, Turion 64, or Sempron processor
512 MB RAM (1 GB or more recommended for Windows Vista and virtualization)
40 GB Hard Drive (80+ GB recommended for dual-boot or virtualization)
Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) network adaptor

For remote access, we strongly recommend having at least DSL-level broadband access to the Internet.