The Council on Computing will recommend that incoming freshmen buy a Power Macintosh this year, a significant upgrade from the Quadra 605 it recommended to the Class of 1998.
The council decided to recommend the computer, a yet unreleased Power Macintosh, at its meeting last Thursday.
Council members said yesterday they could not comment on specifics of the package because Apple Computer, Inc. has not publicly disclosed details about the computer.
"I can't tell you the details," said Chemistry Professor John Winn, who chairs the council. But Winn said the recommended computer package will give students access to more memory, disk and display space.
Winn said Apple will probably release the new computer "within a month."
The proposed computer package is significantly more expensive than in past years, Winn said. Last year's package cost about $1,400.
Winn said he worked with the financial aid office before the council made the decision to make sure the package would be affordable. He said he expected "somewhere around half" of incoming freshmen will buy the recommended package.
Tom Caputo '96, one of two undergraduate students on the council, said the Power Mac "is based on a completely different chip," than older Macintosh computers, which allows it to function more quickly.
He said the Power Mac is the "trend where Macintosh computing is going."
Both Caputo and Winn said one of the council's main concerns was to recommend a package that would meet incoming students' needs for their four years at Dartmouth.
Winn said the Power Macintoshes will be very helpful for students to have when the College upgrades its network to Ethernet and Apple releases its new operating system that will only work on Power Macs.
Winn said the computer will be "a very useful machine right out of the box for everybody."
But he said, "I don't think students who are here now will be drooling with envy at the freshman package."
