Promoting laptops will assist all

By Maggie Damghani
Opinions Editor

UNCP is joining many other universities by becoming a completely wireless campus.

New priorities
It’s time to jump on the bandwagon even further and make having a laptop a priority for students, or at least available to students at an affordable cost.

Schools such as UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Greensboro and Duke University have a requirement that all incoming freshmen have a laptop that meets the university’s specifications.

Convenient learning
It goes without saying that wireless Internet and laptops are the most convenient and portable solution for a learning environment.

Even when students have a desktop in their residence, they often make trips home on the weekends, study abroad or leave the university for conferences and events.

This is a precursor to what students will face when graduating.

Our society is becoming increasingly mobile. How many successful professionals would leave their home, for a business or personal trip, without some access to the Internet and a laptop or PDA to get work done on?

Great service
The university can perform a great service to students by using their buying power to get discounts for students from vendors willing to work with the university.

UNC-Greensboro has made deals with IBM/Lenovo and Apple to give student discounts as a part of their “University Student Laptop Initiative” that started during the Fall 2007 semester.

Using resources
Even more important for UNCP to consider would be to stock laptops in the bookstore. That would make it so that students can use their financial aid to pay for a laptop that will last their educational career and possibly beyond, depending on when the student purchases it.