Northern Michigan University TLC Laptop Program
Art & Design Majors

All Art & Design majors receive a Apple MacBook to support their academic and studio courses as part of the Teaching, Learning and Connectivity laptop program; the laptop is replaced every two years with a newer model.

MacBook Features
(current 2010-11 model)

Polycarbonate unibody enclosure
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
3MB on-chip shared L2 cache
1066MHz frontside bus
2GB of 1066MHz DDR3 memory
250GB ATA Hard Drive
MagSafe power port
Mini DisplayPort
Two USB 2.0 ports
Audio in/out
13.3-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display
NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM
Built-in iSight camera
Mini DisplayPort
Built-in 63.5-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery (10 Hour Battery)
Super Drive (-R,-R DL,-RW,+R,+R DL,+RW)
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet
AirPort Extreme 802.11a/b/g/n
Fullsize Keyboard
Multi-Touch trackpad

Software Mac OSX, iDvd, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, Garage Band, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash, and Microsoft Office. Additional software is available for specific courses.

The MacBook is backed by the staff of the Academic Computer Center and the Apple Support Hotline. After two years of use, students will be issued new MacBooks.

Academic Computing Services - support for student MacBooks

Art & Design Students Use MacBooks

Electronic Imaging students utilize the MacBook to create digital photographic illustrations and web graphics using Adobe Photoshop, web page designs using Adobe Dreamweaver, interactive web sites using Adobe Flash, and support general portfolio development. The MacBook in combination with the high end equipment available in the Electronic Imaging Studio allows majors the ability to have the flexibility of a notebook and the power to connect to dual processor workstations for rendering, scanners, digital cameras, and large format printers. The School of Art and Design runs a high end file server to facilitate transfer between MacBooks and the computer studio.

Also, students in Graphic Communication are using the MacBook to create typographic layout for course work and portfolio development. Posters, publication spreads, advertisements, corporate identity campaigns, and brochures are created using a variety of software like QuarkXpress, and Adobe Illustrator. Students make extensive use of the wireless connection to transfer files from their MacBook to our class file servers. Professional ink jet printers, scanners, and digital cameras in our digital studio are used in combination with the MacBooks to produce student work.

Photography students use Adobe Photoshop for color photography. Film transparency images are scanned and then adjusted using the tools available in Adobe Photoshop. Art and Design students enrolled in AD 217 Color Photography have used their MacBooks to work on scanned photographic images. After appropriate adjustments are made on the image it is then printed using the Epson Printers.

Digital Cinema majors are digitizing video directly into the MacBook from their cameras via firewire and editing their videos with Final Cut Pro and producing sound tracks. The MacBook is a portable, video editing studio.