<p>Has anyone purchased a computer from the Supe store? If so, what kind of support/repair does UA offer? My son will be an aerospace eng. major and currently has a Thinkpad which is fine for now but is two years old. We were thinking of buying him a new computer but not sure what to get. At Bama Bound the engineering folks just said ‘get what you like and what you are comfortable with’. No real gauge for specs etc. </p>
<p>What I would like to figure out is can my son use what he has for now as a freshman and maybe wait to get something more powerful as he moves along through the engineering program and gets into the more difficult classes. I was also wondering how much engineering work is actually done on their own computers as compared to using the computer labs.</p>
<p>My thinking about buying it from the Supe store is if something goes wrong, he can just take it there for repair/advice. I am too far away to help him on these matters plus I don’t know a darn thing about it. My older daughter has a MAC which is going on 4 years old and is still humming along with not one bit of trouble. None, nada. But I don’t think too many engineers are using Macs.</p>
<p>Opinions please.</p>
<p>I know that if you buy a Dell (with the Dell service contract), if you have a problem, they will send someone to your child’s dorm room to fix it.</p>
<p>My older son had the NMF Dell which came with a Dell service contract… My younger son has a Dell that we ordered thru Dell and added the service contract.</p>
<p>I don’t know what the Supe store offers in terms of support. I don’t know if there are any advantages to buy from them…but maybe there is. I would call and find out.</p>
<p>I know that the campus has some kind of service/support for all computers…not just ones purchased at Supe…[Hardware</a> and Software Support | OIT - The University of Alabama](<a href=“http://oit.ua.edu/oit/services/software-licensing/hardware-and-software-support/]Hardware”>http://oit.ua.edu/oit/services/software-licensing/hardware-and-software-support/)</p>
<p>If you want to buy a Mac, the Supe store gives the same student discount as the Apple store.</p>
<p>Mom,
Thanks for the quick reply. I know at some schools if you buy from their store, you get a loaner for free when your computer goes on the blink and they need to have it for awhile to repair it. I wasn’t sure what the case was at Bama. At my daughter’s school they do not offer that. They do repairs but not always in a manner that is timely for the student. Of course, she hasn’t had to deal with this herself as her Mac is problem free.</p>
<p>I know I can go to a store and get a computer I guess what I was wondering from the engineers on here is what kind of specs do you really need?. I’m trying to figure out if my son’s current Thinkpad is good enough to start out with or do I need to go and buy something new right now?</p>
<p>I did check the engineering website again and what they require is pretty general. They also stated PC or Mac platforms are okay which surprised me.</p>
<p>I know at some schools if you buy from their store, you get a loaner for free when your computer goes on the blink and they need to have it for awhile to repair it.</p>
<p>I think Dell also gives you a loaner if you have the service contract. </p>
<p>I would call the Supe store and ask to speak to a person who knows a lot about their offerings. </p>
<p>We just bought our son a Macbook Pro for grad school. I think I paid around $2,200 for it. I did pay the extra $100 for the year of classes (can be done online or in any Apple store.) the classes are one on one at the Apple store and son is learning a lot…since he had always been a PC user. The Mac does have some cool features.</p>
<p>However, it’s not necessary to spend $2k on a laptop (this was his grad present and his choice). A very good Dell or whatever can be had for less than a thousand.</p>
<p>I think just having a lot of memory, hard drive space, Webcam, and fast speed is what kids want.</p>
<p>I do think that eng’g students do a lot of work in labs on those computers because of the software that is needed to be used.</p>