Every incoming freshman faces the same set of decisions involving what he or she deems necessary for their college careers. One additional choice provided by Quinnipiac, is whether to partake in the laptop purchase program.

The Quinnipiac Web site, e-mails, and letters mandated that freshmen students were “required” to purchase the Dell Latitude D630 through a university sponsored program. With the program, students receive unlimited support from the Help Desk and have a four-year warranty on the computer.

However, how beneficial are these Dell Latitudes? It seems that Quinnipiac students have found their required laptops to cause hassle. According to junior Ging Zhang, a member of the E-Star program, and Help Desk, “The most common issue this year is that after the computer goes through the updates, if the user doesn’t restart the computer it goes to a blue screen, and then the user can’t do anything.”

The solution to this, as some freshmen already know, is re-imaging.

“In two weeks, I’ve had [my laptop] re-imaged twice. They don’t even know what’s wrong, they just re-image it,” said Stephanie Doherty, a freshman nursing major.

For those who remain unaware, Zhang explains exactly what re-imaging is, “re-imaging wipes out the whole hard drive and restores a new image. Basically it’s a brand new system free of everything,” he said.

This is not the only problem being faced by users. Freshman Samantha Campbell had a severe laptop malfunction after only one month of use.

“One day the screen started flickering, but it was working, then I went to class and it would turn on but the screen would slowly fade from the bottom to the top from black to white,” Campbell said. “Then if I pushed any buttons the computer would beep at me.”

When the Help Desk was unable to fix the problem, Campbell had to wait until the next day for Dell to arrive in order to get her computer fixed.

Kathleen Griese, a freshman public relations major, also expressed her complaints with the Dell 630.

“My major problem with the laptops is that mine won’t connect to the printers in the library, it un-installs my printer occasionally and I can’t close it or it shuts off,” Griese said.

A main concern of both students and teachers, is that the freshman computers are working with different software than the rest of the campus.

The Latitude 630 that freshmen received this year came equipped with Windows Vista, and Microsoft 2007. Vista was released earlier this year, as an upgrade from Windows XP. Zhang