Computer Health Check

To be clear: Code Camp does not require you to buy a new computer! The no install options) page is all you need for Code Camp. This page is intended to help you gauge whether your computer might encounter issues doing spatial analysis once term starts.

Note

When answering the questions below, ‘your computer’ is the machine on which you plan to do the programming.

Hardware Requirements

In our experience, the students most likely to encounter problems share one or more of the following characteristics:

  1. Their computer 8GB or less of RAM.
  2. Their computer has less than 20GB of free disk space remaining.

Read on below to check what your situation is…

You will need to look up:

  • How much RAM does your computer have? Help.
  • How much free disk space does your computer have? Help.

You will need to look up:

  • How much RAM does your computer have? Help.
  • How much free disk space does your computer have? Help.

We’re going to assume that you know what you’re doing (df -h). If you want a recommendation, we’d probably go with the latest stable Ubuntu desktop release. The LTR releases could also be a good choice though we tend to like have access to newer UIs and tools.

Recommendations

If you are looking for a recommendation as to what to buy:

  1. Don’t worry about getting the fastest chip, get as much RAM as you can. Don’t get less than 32GB of RAM, and get more if you can afford it and your system will take it.
  2. Don’t worry about getting the biggest hard drive, get the fastest one you can. You should get a SSD (Solid State Drive), but get a M2 type SSD if you can afford it and it’s available for your system.
  3. Think about portability vs. screen size: a 15” (or larger) laptop gives you a lot of screen real estate (and they generally have high spec chips that consume more power) but if you’re going to be out and about all day, carrying a 17” laptop together with the charger, cables, and all that, is going to be heavy.
  4. Only after you’ve sorted this out should you look for the fastest chipset that’s still within your budget.

Should you buy a Windows, Linux, or Apple machine? You should probably stick with whatever you’re familiar with since learning your way around a new Operating System while also learning to code is just raising the bar unnecessarily. Around CASA we use a mix of all three, and you can probably find as many opinions as there are staff members.

Saving Money

Two easy things to do to save money on a new machine are:

  1. Unless there is a specific reason to do so (e.g. getting a system with Apple’s latest M2 chip), don’t buy the latest machine, buy a model from earlier in the year/the previous year instead and upgrade the RAM and hard drive instead.
  2. Only buy the machine when you have access to a student discount. The discount for Apple computers is relatively modest (ca. 10%) compared to ‘back to school’ offers for Windows machines, but as the Brits would say: even 10% is better than a kick in the teeth!

Software Requirements

In our experience the students most likely to encounter problems share one or more of the following characteristics:

  1. Their computer runs Windows 10 Home or older, or
  2. Their computer runs MacOS 10.13 (High Sierra) or older.

As long as your computer is running one of the last two major releases of the Operating System you should encounter few issues.

  • What Operating System and Version is your computer running? Help.
  • What Operating System and Version is your computer running? Help.

Recommendations

If you are using a Mac then your system should have the option to update to the latest version of the MacOS at no charge. If you are unable to update then it is likely that you have an older machine that is not fully supported by the most recent Operating System and, in all probability, you will also encounter issues running the programming environment locally (i.e. not in the cloud).

If you are using a Windows PC then try to update to either Windows 11 or to Windows 10 Pro as this will ‘unlock’ additional features that are useful for supporting the programming environment. Some of that unlocking process can require mucking about with the BIOS. As a student you are likely to qualify for significantly cheaper/free updates, so make sure you do this when you have access to the discount.

System Updates

Now that you know your computer is ‘up-to-spec’, please ensure that your computer is fully up-to-date with all Operating System and application updates before following any of the other steps in this brief guide to getting started.

Automatic Updates

Once you have installed the programming environment we strongly recommend that you turn off automatic updates for your computer until the end of the academic year. This is not to say that you should not install security and other updates over the course of the year, but to emphasise that it should be at a time of your choosing. In previous years, students’ computers have automatically updated to a whole new operating system version two nights before an assessment deadline, breaking existing code and causing lots of needless stress.