Gripes about the cost of laptops were kept to a minimum after the semester started.

 “I haven’t heard a lot of complaints,” said Robert Milnes, director of the school of art and design.

The lack of charges may be because many students already had their own laptops and were actively taking them to class sessions, said Robin Love, assistant professor in the department of child and adolescent development program. 

“There were other students, though, who did buy laptops after the program became part of the wireless project,” Love said.

Love thinks there is some financial strain put on students when requiring them to purchase a laptop and is surprised that she hasn’t heard more complaints.

“I believe the faculty and administrators involved in the project need to be sensitive to the students’ financial concerns,” she said.

Loretta Gibson studies photojournalism.

“I applied for financial aid, and basically if I’m approved I’ll get a laptop. If not, I can’t afford one.”

Some financial options are available when purchasing a laptop. About 100 students have requested an increase in their financial aid budget to be able to afford the cost of a laptop, said Colleen Brown, director of the financial aid and scholarship office. 

“In general we try to fund the student with grant funds first,” Brown said. “Most students have received their maximum grant funding, so then we review loan eligibility.”

A student can request up to $2,000. The process of requesting and receiving a loan takes about four to six weeks, Brown said.

A loan might be the only way to go for those students on financial aid who have used up all grant monies available to them. This is because even though laptop purchases are covered by financial aid, the amount of the financial aid awards weren’t raised, Love said.

“So if their financial aid award just covered SJSU fees and ordinary college expenses there was no money left for laptops,” Love said.

Getting a loan is exactly what these students did.

“I went to the bookstore and put a 25 percent down payment,” said Yvonne Pingue, a photojournalism major, talking about her personal laptop purchasing experience. “I’ll pay it off over the next two years. It will be about $50 a month.”

Her interest rate is about eight or nine percent, she said.

“So it’s not that bad,” Pingue said.

Roman Goshev is studying digital media design.  He also applied for a loan to be able to pay for his laptop and is working away on it in a computer lab.

“You actually get a pretty good signal and the speed of download is pretty fast,” he said about his laptop and the wireless program.

Both Pingue and Goshev are happy with their purchases, even though they needed to take out a loan.

“I was going to need a laptop someday,” Pingue said.  “I might as well get it now.”