Course Matters
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Laptops
If you decide to buy a laptop for use in graduate students,
you probably shouldn't go below this:
Pentium-II/400 or Celleron/500, 64MB RAM, and 4G HD.
A PCMCIA ethernet card (10baseT) is a must -- you can install Linux
through the network and it may save your day when the wireless
network somehow goes down.
You don't need a CDROM -- you will find little use for it,
and you can mount one over the network or borrow a portable one
when you need to.
IBM makes a full line of a decent laptops --
to start, you can check out IBM Thinkpad i series
(e.g., Thinkpad i-1211, which goes as low as $900).
Sony also makes some very good looking ones.
If you go to some surplus stores (like egghead.com),
you may find some very obsoleted laptops. For example, scroll down
this
page you can find some in $300-$500 range. They are solid
machines (specially IBM ones), but just too outdated and
way too slow - usually like Pentium/133 and 32MB RAM.
Wireless LAN
I'll try to get the department to lent you a wireless LAN card,
but the supplies will be limited.
If you decide to buy a laptop, you may as well buy a wireless card,
so you can still have wireless access after this course is over.
The wireless LAN infrastructure in ACES and
TAY
is 802.11b (11Mbps).
Here are a few recommended cards:
- ORiNOCO PC Gold card by Lucent:
around $150 (or $130 for the Silver version),
a very solid and proven card,
Linux driver stable and built-in in RedHat 7.0.
(If you use RedHat 7.0, this card is just plug-n-play in ACES!)
- Addtron's Wireless PCMCIA card (AWP-100): around $130,
okay card, Linux driver said to be available by vendor.
- Other brands (Xircom, D-Link, Linksys, 3Com, ...):
around $100-$180 (looks like everybody is making one,
price should go down soon),
should work as long as it says IEEE 802.11,
but make sure it has Linux driver.
Wireless basestation.
Once you get the card, you may be thinking about setting up a basestation
at home, especially if you have DSL/cable modem.
Basestation is getting cheap too. Here is one:
- D-Link's 802.11B Wireless LAN Access Point (model # DWL-1000AP)
is only $199!
Well, you can set up wireless access for all your friends
in your apartment complex and share a superfast DSL line
(if you can find a way to charge them)!
Off Campus Access
Some pages or materials in this site are limited to UT network only.
To gain access from off-campus, you can use the
UT Library proxy.
Power Point Files
In case you don't have Power Point software in your PC
to read the powerpoint slides from this web site,
you can download the
PowerPoint Viewer.