Yay, more debt. Never a bad time to saddle poorer students up with a bit more debt before they leave.

So we don't require that students buy books, but we do require that they buy a computer. Very interesting.

As much as I love the journalism department, I have to disagree with this decision. Requiring that students purchase a laptop is one thing, but and correct me if I'm wrong, journalism students are generally not the richest of people. I don't see this going over very well for the first few years of adoption, especially from parents of incoming students.

Once the students are done with their 4 years, their mac is obsolete. I know the journalism department has this *weird* obsession with macs, and I realize that it's fast becoming an industry standard, but I think the extra up-front fees are going to drive students away, which is a damn shame, considering how seemingly affordable Eastern is when compared to other state schools.

History shows that technology adapts to standards. I can honestly say that there are very few things a tech-savvy I could do with a $3,000 Macbook Pro that I could not do with a mid-range $750 laptop, when you add some software costs. If I was going to spend that much money on a computer, it had better never give me the spinning pinwheel of death, or at least have two mouse buttons.

I wonder how many students buy a computer before they go off to college? I know I bought two through the course of my time at Eastern and one more after graduating in 2005. Is it out of reason to ask students to buy something they are probably going to buy anyway?

The J-department could make it a little easier to swallow by recomending a 13" MacBook instead of the 15" MacBook Pro (about a $1,000 difference). You loose a little performance, but my MacBook with slight upgrades runs the recomended programs fine.

As far as mitch's points about a $3,000 computer becoming obsolete in four years, in my experience, Macs have a much longer shelf life than PCs. Macs might be a higher initial investment, but they don't need the constant software/hardware updates Windows machines need to keep running.

And can someone please explain to me the obsession Windows users have with the right click button? I see how it's useful for gamers (who as I recall tied up Eastern's bandwith to no end, but maybe things have changed), but how do productive members of society benefit from it?

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Matt Meinheit, The Daily Eastern News editor-in-chief (Fall 2004), wish I could be an incoming journalism major in 2009.