Laptop Recommendation

Apple shares common goals with higher education — innovation and individual empowerment. Apple creates powerful solutions that enable new modes of curriculum delivery, better ways of conducting research, and exciting opportunities for professional development for faculty, students, and staff.

The College of Education and Apple have worked together to provide laptops to our students at prices well below the standard price available to students.

Recommended Systems

The systems shown below were chosen to provide College of Education students the widest range of features while still maintaining low prices.  More complete specifications and up-to-date pricing can be found through the links below.

13" MacBook Pro Specifications

2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x1GB 250GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm SuperDrive 8x (DVD+-R DL/DVD+-RW/CD-RW) Backlit Keyboard (English) / User's Guide AppleCare Protection Plan for MacBook / Macbook Air / 13" MacBook Pro - Auto-enroll

*Special Offer

Limited time only: Right now if you order a Mac computer you get a free all-in-one printer and an 8GB iPod Touch. This special is part of the back to school program Apple is offering. When you order the computer make sure to ask about it.

Recommended Software

The College of Education also recommends that students purchase the most recent version of Microsoft Office for MacOS X. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offers these software packages at a substantial discount to University of Illinois students through the Microsoft Student Select partnership.

The College of Education also recommends that students purchase virus protection for MacOS X. Sophos is currently offered to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign students at substantial discount.

How to Purchase

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign encourags students to purchase through the Illini Flash Drive. They work to bring the lowest prices possible to faculty, staff and students. You can also visit the University of Illinois Webstore to purchase discounted software.

After Your Purchase

The Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) maintains a team of consultants dedicated to the support of computing within the College of Education. We recommend that students visit User Services in Room 1 Education during the first few weeks of the semester to receive instructions on how to access the wired/wireless Internet and how to print within the College, to acquire additional software such as anti-virus and spyware software, and to have any other questions answered regarding the laptop.

User Services will also provide the support throughout the year should students have software or hardware issues with these recommended laptops.