Are you Pratt faculty, staff, or a grad student? Do you need a new desktop, laptop, or server?
We recommend upgrading to a new laptop every 3-4 years and a new desktop every 4-5 years.
Click here for new computer request form
This form is for faculty, staff, and grad students only. We will follow up with you before we place the order.
For incoming undergrads:
Pratt students are expected to complete homework and laboratory assignments using software that requires considerable computing power and memory, e.g., SOLIDWORKS, LabVIEW and MATLAB. This software is available on some of the public computers and in departmental class labs, and much of it is also available for student download to their individual laptops. Some of these products do not work at all in Macintosh (“Mac”) computers and some do not work very well on Macs.
Therefore, for Pratt students who choose to purchase a personal laptop with the intention of downloading and running engineering software on their laptop, it is recommended to purchase a PC that has at least 16GB of memory, 1TB of storage (solid state is preferred) and 802.11ac WiFi. We recommend Windows 11 operating system. Your screen size should be at least 14 inches, or you should anticipate connecting to an external monitor for some assignments. An external mouse with a scroll wheel is sometimes convenient.
If students prefer the Mac environment, they can leverage Virtual Machines (available on campus) and tools like VMWare Fusion. The recommendation for a Mac would be a MacBook Pro, 14” screen, 16GB memory, M4 processor, and 1TB of drive space.