GW's Computing Regime

So when GW says it requires students to have a laptop that runs Windows XP Professional, what do you suppose that means? As I mentioned the other day, I don't want to buy a Windoze pc, and in fact this is one of the more glaring issues I have with attending GW in the first place. I wonder how many other schools are getting so authoritarian in their computing policies.

For the record, GW says you must have a certain Cisco wireless networking card for your computer because GW's network uses Cisco's LEAP encryption. However, it appears Apple's Airport wireless networking cards work fine with LEAP, so long as you follow these directions for using Cisco's LEAP authentication via Airport.

GW uses Extegrity for its exams, so that's definitely Windoze-only and emulators like Virtual PC almost certainly won't work. It also uses SynchronEyes computer lab instruction software for its legal writing and research course. This is another program that appears to take control of your desktop, so it might not work in emulation either.

It may be that buying a windoze laptop is a compromise I have to make to go to law school, but what may be most disturbing about this is the slippery slope fear it creates. What other compromises lay ahead? And are they really worth making? As the clock ticks down to just slightly more than a month until school starts, these questions are no longer academic, and my level of dismay over what should otherwise be a fairly trivial issue suggests that I'm not really ready for this reality.

*sigh*

Posted July 14, 2003 12:43 PM | law general