<p>Would you guys recommend bringing a laptop or a desktop to CMU? Or even better, are the dorms large enough to accomodate both a desktop and a laptop?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>When I went to the sleeping bag weekend, the majority of students seemed to have a laptop. If I get the opportunity to attend, I plan on bringing a laptop because CMU has an awesome wireless network that lets you online anywhere on campus.</p>
<p>OK. But I'd also like to have a more powerful PC available for media applications. Would the dorm rooms be able to accomodate to both?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Actually, the girl I roomed with told me of a guy who had both and on top of that he had like 3 monitors for his desktop to play Counterstrike. It was insane, but at a school so technology-oriented, I think they could easily accomodate both.</p>
<p>Fantastic. Thanks.</p>
<p>There's definitely enough room in the dorms to use both. I use a laptop and a desktop, and my roommate and I have 5 LCD screens between us (CS majors, of course...). In my experience the ideal setup is a powerful desktop for real work/gaming/hosting and a light, cheap laptop for coding and checking email between (or during) classes. </p>
<p>A decently powerful, medium-size laptop will also do the job and save some space. In that case, I would go with a ThinkPad or MacBook Pro. I don't have a tablet PC, but a lot of people say they're really useful as well.</p>
<p>A desktop would also suffice. I use my desktop for most of my work, and earlier in the year I hardly ever used my laptop. There are clusters all over the place, and it only takes a few seconds to log in and check email (assuming you use the Linux clusters...it takes a lot longer to log in on the Windows and Apple machines). As far as doing work during the day without a laptop, many people store their files in their AFS filespace (AFS is the big awesome distributed file system connecting CMU, MIT, and a bunch of other university networks) and work from there.</p>
<p>It comes down to your budget and personal preferences. As long as you have your own computer you'll be fine.</p>
<p>By the way, it's really easy to host on the campus network. They don't put up any real barriers other than the bandwidth limits (2GB/day on wired, 750 MB/day on wireless).</p>
<p>i wish I had a laptop for starters... :D
my last one was an Acer hand me down, 333Mhz Celeron.</p>