Minimum Computer Specifications

While the selection of an appropriate laptop computer is a personal decision, we do have a few recommendations to help guide you in the process. The following are minimums to help ensure that your laptop will serve you well for your four years at Clarkson. 

Special Note

Although it is not a requirement, students may find it useful to have access to a computer or tablet with a pen-touch interface to facilitate the electronic submission of handwritten materials.

	Windows PC	Apple Macintosh*
Operating System	Windows 10	OS X 10.15 or later (Catalina)
Productivity Tools	Microsoft Office 2016 or 2019 Microsoft Office is available to current students at no charge.
Processor Type	MINIMUM Intel Core i5 (12th Generation or newer)  RECOMMENDED Intel Core i7 (12th Generation or newer)	MINIMUM Apple M1 chip RECOMMENDED Apple M2 chip
Memory	MINIMUM 16 GB RAM RECOMMENDED 32 GB RAM
Storage	MINIMUM 500 GB SSD RECOMMENDED 1 TB SSD
Warranty	3-year parts and labor
Insurance	Comprehensive breakage, theft, hazard

If you are considering a Mac, please consider a larger hard drive to accommodate "dual-boot" into Windows using Boot Camp to allow use of some Windows-only programs that are required for some classes.  A Free version of the Windows 10 Student Edition operating system is available for all students through Microsoft Azure for Teaching.  Ask the helpdesk for details.

Our processor recommendations are based on hardware specs that we use in our classrooms and computer labs where we have fully tested software compatibility and performance.  It's possible that other vendors such as AMD have processors that will perform as well as the Intel recommendations, but we have not tested them ourselves.
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