Accessories and Extras
There are an endless number of accessories made for laptops. Here are a few that we think are the most important to students, with answers to some common questions.
- Ethernet cable - While there is widespread wireless coverage on campus, the dorms are not covered by wireless. In dorm rooms, you will need to connect via an Ethernet cable. You can buy them at the NCSU Bookstore for a lower price than you will find in most stores.
- Cable lock - A cable lock is a simple metal cable and lock that affixes a laptop to a large item, such as a table or desk. The idea is to deter anyone who is looking around for something easy to grab. While theft is not widespread on campus, you never know what can happen when you let your laptop out of your sight. For this reason, it is smart to use a cable lock any time you leave your laptop unattended.
- Printer - We do not feel that it is essential for each student to own a printer, but many students find having a printer to be a nice convenience. If you would like to print documents in your own room, you can probably share one with your roommate. Students can print to laser printers all over campus for a few cents per page.
- USB memory key (a.k.a. flash drive, pen drive) - These devices are handy for making backups of documents and transferring files between computers.
- External hard drive - These have much greater capacity than USB memory keys and are nice for backing up and storing large files like music or other multimedia files. In addition, some laptops come preinstalled with software that allows you to make a full backup of your internal hard drive. An external hard drive is a convenient place to store these backups just in case the hard drive in the laptop fails.
Note on Warranty vs. Damage vs. Insurance
A warranty covers defects in manufacturing or parts that fail on their own. It does not cover accidental damage, spills, drops, etc.
If you'd like to protect against those occurrences, you will have to add a protection plan of some type. This can be purchased at the time of order and sometimes even after you've received the computer. Some vendors offer it themselves, and some offer this type of plan through a third party.
These plans cover nearly everything that we have seen. A small percentage of parts just go bad on their own, and accidents happen.
The only eventualities not covered by either type of plan listed above are theft and fire. To protect against these, we suggest you speak with an insurance agent.