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Information to aid you in purchasing hardware and software. Of course, there are many more avenues, and this site does not promote any one vendor. Caveat Emptor, as always!
ITS provides purchase consulting services, give them a call at 919 962 HELP or drop them email. Feel free to ask for an appointment with a consultant if you wish to have an extended consultation. If you're new to computing, and are unsure of what you need or how to get started, they can be helpful, but do be aware they lean towards
IBMLenovo pretty hard these days.Departmental Purchases
Department and Campus organizations typically make purchases of software via the ITS Software distribution program, and hardware via Materials and Disburment. The easiest way to handle this is to use the Apple Store for Education online to prepare a quote to submit to purchasing--go through the web forms and print the pdf to send in.
Individual Purchases
Individuals that are UNC Staff, Students or Faculty, can purchase hardware or software via the Ram Shop, located in Student Stores. They offer a substantial discounts on Apple and other hardware. For Apple products, you can also use the Apple Store for Education online (if you buy through the latter site, the Ramshop gets the credit for the sale, so you're helping the scholarship program).
Additional information on locating a source beyond those listed above for Apple product is at Apple's Where to Buy page. They can help you find everything from Consultants to ISPs.
Other Vendors
- MacZone
- CDW for Government (they take K Numbers)
Shareware (low cost or free)
- ITS Software Distribution maintains a shareware site for UNC affiliates. Go here for UNC licensed software, and software supported by ITS, but see the other sites below for a better selection.
- Version Tracker is a good site to use to make sure you're up to date.
- Macresource, news and reviews.
- MIT's InfoMac mirror
- Network and Connectivity software is provided by the MacOrchard. Here you can find (and submit) reviews of software, and the site is very up to date and well organized. TuCows is another good site for networking software.
- Switzerland's Sunsite is a good source of mirrors to major archives in the US (look in the Info-mac section), esp. in the afternoon when those US sites are fully loaded and the Swiss asleep....
- The MacHack conference produces some interesting software (be careful, these were done under intense pressure!)
- Pure Mac has a nice list broken down into topics.