Caucasus University has recently presented 462 high performance laptops to freshmen students as gift for the New Year. According to the university professionals, students must have permanent access to a portable computing machine in order to cope with the latest curriculum. Students studying Corporate Finance, Data Analysis, Financial Accounting and other subjects must have a fully functional Internet enabled laptop so that they can access the online library and other academic resources anytime they want. This will also offer the students practice on the latest computing machines.

Despite of the fact that the university has to bear huge cost to present 462 laptops (especially in the period of recession) it believes that the moral satisfaction and success of the students are more important than the financial crisis. So, the university has taken this bold step and presented Hewlett-Packard HP 550 laptops sporting Core 2 Duo processors. A total of 462 freshmen received the laptops out of which 270 were from Caucasus School of Business (CSB), 145 from Caucasus School of Law (CSL), 30 from Caucasus School of Media (CSM) and 17 from Caucasus School of Technology (CST).

Tiko Gugberidze, Director of Marketing and PR Department,” When you study at CU you need to have permanent access to a computer. In subjects such as Corporate Finance, Data Analysis, Financial Accounting and others students need to have a laptop. CU has added School of Technology where students are constantly using computers. We gave our students laptops in order to make it easier for them to study. Of course it was a huge burden for CU from a financial point of view, but the satisfaction and success of our students is most important. At CU we provide the best quality service that needs constant development.”

Tags for this article: laptop, Laptops, students

Disability Support Services (DSS) has decided to raffle a laptop next year in order raise funds to buy special laptops loaded with unusual software which will help the students suffering with disability.

The students will be offered the laptops of their choice and they will also be allowed to take away the unit to their homes. That means it completely depends on the student’s choice whether they want to use the laptops in the lab or at their home, because some of the students find it difficult to come to the lab for work. And as the students are offered the laptop of their choice, they can even pick advanced and capable machines like the Sony Vaio VGN-FW21Z to help them out. Most of the DSS students are suffering from learning disabilities such as Dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. For such students the laptops, which have adaptive software installed, are really useful. The adaptive software basically contains Kurzweil 3000, which can convert the printed text into audio. It can also increase the size of the printed text. The DSS department is looking forward to raising enough money to buy at least five laptops and licenses for the Kurzweil 3000.

According to Regina Pino, assistant to the coordinator of disability support services, “If I was dyslexic, for example, I could use this software to see the words as I hear them being spoken, so I know exactly how to spell the word. If I couldn’t see well, this program allows me to make the text bigger.”

The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project is really becoming a hot favourite in developing countries. Although the XO laptops are minimally powered, they are a perfect tool for making kids computer literate at a minimal cost. The goal of the programme is astoundingly to develop laptops that are even less expensive than the Asus Eee PC 701 4G. The only issue that the OLPC programme has faced is that the laptops used in this project are running on Linux based Sugar Operating System instead of Windows. While in some countries Sugar is considered as a great operating system, others argue that as the global workspace is dominated by the Windows based systems, the students should practice on the same platform; otherwise they will turn into computer literates but still incompetent in the Windows environment.

Thus the OLPC has decided to introduce new XO laptops running Windows XP Pro. As of now, Peru will be the first country to experience these newbies. In addition to this, a dual boot edition is also expected in future. To find out which OS the kids prefer, they were given both the laptops to work and play. The results were amazing. The kids find it easier to work on windows based XO machines but they still want to stick to the Sugar OS because of the array of pre-installed learning games that come with it. Obviously, both the operating systems offer excellent opportunities to learn and enjoy.