<p>My husband will be attending PittStart with my daughter in June. We are getting ready to order her laptop in the next week or so (she'll be a freshman engineering student) and I have a question about software. I know that we can purchase all the necessary software at PittStart. Should my daughter take her laptop with her to PittStart or do they just give her the CD's and then she installs it herself back at home? Also, should we purchase the Office package (Word, Excel, etc...) through Pitt rather than having it preloaded at the laptop manufacturer? Is this a cheaper and better way to do it? Thanks!</p>
<p>I’m not sure what additional software your daughter will need for engineering, but some of the “canned” software (Microsoft suite of products, lojack, etc) is free.
[For</a> Students | Computing Services and Systems Development | University of Pittsburgh](<a href=“http://technology.pitt.edu/software/for-students-software.html]For”>http://technology.pitt.edu/software/for-students-software.html)</p>
<p>I asked the same question recently when I was speaking to the IT support folks-- who are great by the way and are there 24/7. They said once you have you Pitt email address you can download anything off the site, and the programs you can download such as MS Office, you can pick up the CD’s at any computer lab with your Pitt ID at Pittstart. They don’t have a particular brand they recommend-- I recommend Lenovo Thinkpads!</p>
<p>TitanMom16: That’s what we’re going to order for her - a Lenovo Thinkpad! We’ve probably overdone it with memory and processing speed, but her old HP laptop is driving her nuts! So, if the laptop gets delivered in the next couple of weeks, are you saying that we can go to the Pitt website and go ahead and pay/download software?</p>
<p>All the software she will need as a freshman engineering student is provided for free (other than the computing fee that is paid with your tuition anyway). Last year, at Pittstart, we picked up a disk (at any computer lab) that had all of the Microsoft office products, pitt user software and antivirus and preloaded before the semester started. Anything else (such as Matlab) is available for free download. My son has a Lenovo Thinkpad also, and I would highly recommend it.</p>
<p>I would not buy anything ahead of time, and bear in mind the school’s IT has their own security software requirements before she can even connect to the network. So if you can limit or strip off the pre-loaded stuff, so much the better.</p>
<p>Is there a PC versus Mac issue for engineering students? Is the engineering software limited to a Windows environment?</p>