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School of Computer Programming and Analysis (SCPA)

Hardware

What you need to be successful in the school of SCPA.

You will require:

Windows Hardware

  • A computer running Windows 10 (or 11). Recommended minimum specifications are:
    • RAM: 16GB
    • Processor: i5 processor (i7 or M processor preferred)
    • Storage: 512GB Solid State Drive (SSD) (1TB preferred)
    • Peripherals: Keyboard, mouse/trackpad, webcam, microphone
Note
  • ARM-based Windows machines are not recommended as the College VPN does not support ARM.
  • Windows 10 is no longer available from Seneca. You are responsible for obtaining your own licensed operating system.

Mac Hardware

There are two types of Mac's out there. Older Macs run an Intel chips. Newer chips are the apple M series chips which are ARM chips.

An Intel based Mac or MacBook is perfectly acceptable as you can easily install windows either via a virtual machine (requires VM software such as parallels or vmware). Alternatively Intel Macs can also dual boot into Windows using bootcamp which comes with MacOS. Please check apple's documentation on how to do this. Note that you will need to get a copy of windows in order to do this.

M series Macs allow windows to be loaded via virtual machine software. As the hardware is newer, there may be issues that we are not aware of. Seneca does have access to windows based machines in labs so it may still be possible to do the program with these newer Macs. It just might take a bit more work to get things working fully.

  • Recommended minimum specifications are:
    • RAM: 16GB
    • Processor: Quad-core processor (any base quad core processors in MacBook Air, Pro 13/16" are acceptable)
    • 512GB storage (preferably an SSD)
    • Peripherals: Keyboard, mouse/trackpad, webcam, microphone
Note
  • You will have to run Windows on your Mac in order to run the software required for your courses. Windows can be loaded a few different ways:
    • Bootcamp (Intel processor only)
    • VMWare (free) allows you to run Windows virtually
    • Parallels (50% off for students)
      • Parallels and Windows are available here for SCPA/SDDS students: https://senecapolytechnic.onthehub.com/WebStore/Welcome.aspx
      • A copy of Windows Education is available free for SCPA/SDDS students.
      • Apple always have reduced prices for computers for post secondary students. To check education prices, scroll to bottom of Apple website and click the "shop for university link". for around 4 to 6 weeks before/after the start of fall semester there are usually extra bonuses.

Internet

A high-speed internet connection is needed for online/hybrid courses, and requires a minimum bandwidth of 25mb/sec down, and 2mb/sec up, faster than that is better. The Canadian government has mandated that 50 down and 10 up should be the minimum required to call a connection high-speed.