Allegheny CollegeComputers Summary

Written by Katrina Tulloch

Katrina Tulloch

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Allegheny is both Mac and PC compatible. Students almost always bring their own laptop from home. While it would be possible to go through four years of college using only the school’s computers, bringing your own is far more convenient. Different buildings and computer labs somehow work at different speeds, and the library computers are often taken, so it’s important to know where the fast and empty labs are—Arter and Ruter. For those who bring laptops, most academic buildings are wireless, but not all of the residence halls. A good thing to bring to campus is a wireless router. There has been significant improvement in the speed of the network, but getting wireless remains a constant nuisance for students.

While other schools charge students to use lab printers, at Allegheny it's free to print papers or research from campus computers; however, recent green initiatives have tried to get students to save paper. Computing Services created a printing points system to encourage students to save as much paper as possible by cutting off students' ability to print after a certain number of pages. However, students can request more printing points if they go over the limit, (i.e., explaining that 400 pages of Moby Dick analyses from the Internet was vital in passing English 200).