Required Software
What laptop you buy or bring is generally determined by the software you need to run. There are several pieces of software that are essential for your career here at NC State and are thus required on any laptop computer a student may own.
Microsoft Office
An office productivity suite of tools is critical for your success as a student. Engineering students regularly compose papers and lab reports, create presentations on research and findings, and build spreadsheets to perform calculations on sets of data. To ensure that students can acquire this software, NC State has partnered with Microsoft to provide steep discounts on Office 2007 for the PC and Office 2008 for the Mac.
Versions and Pricing - prices current as of 7/15/09
Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 - $74.95
Includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, InfoPath, Communicator, Groove and OneNote
Microsoft Office Mac 2008 - $74.95
Includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Entourage
What about Open Office?
All of our on-campus Linux and Solaris lab machines run Open Office for office productivity software. However, because we know that most companies in the engineering industry use Microsoft Office for their day-to-day office productivity needs, we have both Open Office and MS Office available for students to use. If you are using a laptop running the Linux operating system, feel free to use Open Office. But if you have assignments for which you need a Microsoft product, you can use one of our many Windows lab machines that run current Microsoft applications.
A Note for ISE and TE Majors using Macs
Both Industrial and Systems Engineering and Textile Engineering majors are required to take the ISE/TE 110 course in the second semester of their freshman year. This course relies heavily on the use of features only available in Excel 2007 for the PC. You can still use an Apple computer, but you will either need to use BootCamp and have a dual-boot Mac OS X / Windows Environment, or utilize virtualization software such as Parallels or VMWare Fusion.
Antivirus Software
Anytime a computer connects to the Internet, another network, or even reads information on a disk, it can be susceptible to a computer virus. These viruses can be as innocent as redirecting your home page in your Internet browser, or as destructive as deleting the entire contents of your hard drive. To guard against viruses, each and every computer that attaches to the NC State network is required to run approved antivirus software. The university has purchased a campus license of the enterprise-grade antivirus software from Trend Micro, which is free for all faculty, staff and students. Visit the NC State Antivirus Website for download and installation instructions.
Remote Access Software
Many engineering software packages cannot be licensed or are too expensive for installation on student-owned computers. As a result, the College of Engineering makes many applications available remotely. This means that your laptop, when connected to a broadband Internet connection, can have nearly identical access to all resources as a lab computer. Depending on your computer platform (Windows, OS X, or Linux), you will need to download and use different software. For more information, please visit our Eos Remote Access site.