Technology Requirements 

Students in the ISM degree programs (MISM and MSISPM) are required to have a laptop computer with them in Pittsburgh for the entire time they are enrolled in their program. You have two options to fulfill this requirement.

Option 1: Program Laptops

You can purchase a laptop through the university laptop program. Academic and institutional discounts are passed on to you. The laptops are specified to meet our system requirements and carry an excellent warranty. They also come with the software needed for your core courses.

Option 2: Non-Program Laptops

You can bring a laptop that you purchased outside of our program laptop option. This laptop must meet the minimum computer requirements listed below. No exceptions will be granted.

Required Configuration

* We recommend that you buy a warranty from the manufacturer that includes telephone support and depot (send your computing in for repairs) service. The warranty should cover the time which you will be at the school. We highly recommend that you buy a warranty from the manufacturer that includes 24 hour telephone support, online support and next business day onsite repairs.

Some warranties will only cover service inside the country of purchase. If you are purchasing a laptop outside of the United States, ask if you will get warranty service while in the United States. You may need to add additional coverage for out of country service.

Accidental Coverage – Many computer manufacturers offer accidental coverage protection which covers liquid spills and breakage damage. No standard computer manufacturer warranty covers liquid spills and breakage. We recommend getting this coverage otherwise you will have pay for these repairs if your home owners or other insurance does not cover accidental damage to your computer.

Hardware Support

Program Laptops

Our onsite technician will service your laptop and repair hardware as needed. An additional benefit of purchasing a program laptop is that we also have a limited number of loaner laptops for you to use if your computer needs to be sent out for repairs.

Non-Program Laptops

Our onsite technician can assist in diagnosing hardware problems and instruct you on how to get it repaired. We will not perform the repairs and you will not have access to our laptop loaner pool. The Computer Maintenance Group on campus can do warranty work and repairs on most major manufactures. This is a fee-based service.

Software Support

We offer installation support for application used in your academic courses. We will not support any application running on anything other than Windows XP Pro. Some of our software requires the operating system language to be set to English.

Should your laptop have a software problem that cannot be readily resolved, we can restore your computer to the image that came with the laptop.

Program Laptop Software Image:

The program laptops come with a CMU software image that includes:

• Windows XP Pro
• MS Visual Studio.net 2005
• Oracle 10g R2

Non-Program Laptop Software Image:

We only offer installation support for applications used in your academic courses. Interactions with other software are not our responsibility. We will not support laptops not set to English language. Please install all the critical Windows updates before arriving on campus.

Course Software:

You are responsible for installing software on your computer. You can get the same software used for the program laptops at the following locations:

• Windows XP Pro - Hamburg Hall A206
• MS Visual Studio.net 2005 - Hamburg Hall A206
• Oracle 10g R2 - Hamburg Hall A206