The Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts strongly encourages students to purchase laptops to serve their communication needs, creative endeavors, and professional preparation. As a community of artists, we recommend that students purchase Apple computers, as this will not only allow for seamless integration with the technology on campus, but it will best prepare them for the professional arena that they will enter upon graduation.

While the College provides the following peripherals, students can benefit from having these resources in their home environment:

color printer
scanner
digital camera
Wacom Tablet.

Recommendations for hardware, software and peripherals that serve a range of computing needs.

Hardware:
Laptop, Apple’s 15 inch 2.53 GHz Macbook, Intel Core i5, 4GB Memory, 500GB hard drive, SD card slot, Built-in 8 -9 hour battery, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M with 256MB, Applecare

n.b. Students who are interested in gaming, animation or video production may wish to purchase a higher-end system, most notably the MacBook Pro, or to utilize the Intel Core @ duo’s capacity to also be configured as a PC.

Monitor
If resources permit, it is enormously helpful for artists to have an additional monitor to provide the “real-estate” necessary to an efficient work process.  Dell color monitors are reasonably priced and quite reliable. Screen size should be at least 17” although 20” – 23” is preferable.

Software
Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, Virus protection, iLife suite, iWorks, Corel Painter

Peripherals
A removable hard-drive with a least 1 GB of storage
Surge protectors for every electronic device.

Camera Recommendation
A digital camera 10 mega pixel or larger with a 18 – 15mm lens
If resources permit, Digital SLR Camera