Fort Hays State University

Hardware Purchasing

Tablets

Before purchasing any hardware from HP, please sign up for HP's educational discount programs. All students and faculty get 6 percent off their entire order. Simply follow the instructions and choose FHSU as your school. You will be allowed to purchase up to 3 laptops/tablets/desktops per year (unless newer regulations apply).

This series from HP is among the highest-rated tablet offerings on the market today. The base configuration can be bought for as little as $883.99 with free shipping! (or $949.99 without the educational discount). The base configuration is plenty adequate for FHSU needs, with a 1.9Ghz dual-core AMD Turion 64 X2 processor, 1GB ram, 120GB hard drive, built-in wireless, an integrated 8x DVD-RW drive, and the best integrated graphics of all tablet offerings, an nVidia Geforce Go 6150, which will accelerate all media applications and games much better than the integrated Intel GMA graphics of most other tablet offerings.

Laptops

Dell Smart Values for Notebooks
- These offerings are the industry's leading values for laptops. Offerings will change, but usually start around $499. Also see Dell's Educational Discount program, but is not as worth-while as HP's educational program. Check prices before the discount to see if there are any savings after applying Dell's educational price. Also, consider before choosing upgrades as they are expensive (and memory is an easy DIY upgrade). See NewEgg for good prices and reviews on laptop (and desktop) memory.
Apple Educational Discounts
- A great discount for students wanting or needing a Mac. Again, consider before choosing upgrades as they are also expensive. An upgrade to 2GB memory will cost an extra $135, whereas 2GB of Apple-approved memory can be bought here for a mere $65 shipped (lifetime warranty), installation will take about 3-5 minutes (even for a non-technical person), and you will have the 1GB of memory which was taken out of the Mac to give to a friend or sell! Also, user installed memory does not void Mac's (or other PC vendor's) warranty. 2GB of Macbook-compatible memory can be bought here for $57 shipped (also with a lifetime warranty).