Laptop for Uni

-WZ-

-WZ-

Active member
Im midway through my first year in Engineering and I definitely need a laptop for school. So far my proposed budget is $1000-1500. I've always wanted a mac, but I know a lot of people don't really recommend them as you can get better specs for a cheaper price with Windows. The other thing is in engineering there's a lot of programs which ive heard are a bitch to run on OSX so I'd most likely have to dual boot with windows if I went down that path. Also, I commute by bus so I only have a backpack with me and can be at school for 10+ hours so it needs to be lightweight, minimal, as well as having a great battery life. The main uses are going to be

1) homework

2) Engineering programs

3) Netflix

4) Newschoolers (might do a bit of video editing here and there)

Some of the options I've looked at are:

Macbook Air

Dell XPS

Asus Zenbook

Windows Surface

In all honestly I know next to nothing about specs but Ive been told I should be looking for something with a minimum i5 processor or equivalent, 8gb ram, and a 256gb hard drive. Resolution would also be nice as Ill be watching a lot of movies on it aswell.

If anyone could give me insight, advice or even break down the tech specs a bit better for me, especially with the models I listed, would be great. Also wondering about buying used... Good or bad idea? Thanks guys!
 
if you decide to take the macbook route then I wouldn't do the Air. Its dual core i5, 4gb ram, and 128 or 256gb hard drive. I would go with a macbook pro, mine is quad core i7, 16gb ram, and 256gb hard drive. I used to be an engineering major and had no problem running Solidworks and shit in Parallels. You should prolly just get a windows tho
 
I wouldn't go macbook air honestly. Its small and the memory isn't much.

That being said...I would suggest a macbook. I have had mine for 8 years and it still runs really really well no complaints. The only problem is the software eventually cant be updated which causes some minor issues unless you spend a lot of $.

Get the MS office package. Everything is great besides excel which sucks if your a power users (use school computers than).

It will out last PC any day of the week. Best for movie watching / internet surfing.
 
I know a few people with the surface book and they all love them. Dual processors will handle all your engineering programs. Only issue I've heard is that it requires a reboot when you reattach the keyboard to the monitor side, but it doesn't sound like you are really gonna use it as a tablet so not a huge deal.
 
I wouldn't go Mac if you're an engineering student. I had (still have) a Macbook when I was in college and needed to run programs on my computer that were Windows only. Partitioning the hard drive and then switching back and forth between windows and OSX was such a pain. I also think it over worked my hard drive, which caused it to crash several times. I was constantly replacing my hard drive.

If you know you're going to be running programs that are Windows only, don't bother getting a Mac. The pain to run Boot Camp and partition the hard drive, then constantly be restarting your computer to switch back and forth between Windows and OSX is just not worth it. And in my experience it takes a toll on your hard drive.

If you feel you HAVE to get a Mac, don't get a Macbook Air. Go for bigger hard drive and RAM. You'll need something more powerful and a larger hard drive to partition.
 
I am a senior in mechanical engineering and I have friends who use macbook pros to run solidworks, mathcad, matlab, and other engineering programs just fine. I personally prefer my XPS though
 
I would never buy a Mac desk top ever. But i love my Mac book air. I use it in almost all my classes, and most profs post their lectures on Blackboard(site my uni uses)so it's easy to follow along. Get an air. So light.
 
Don't get a mac if you're in engineering. Yeah you might eventually be able to get everything to run on it but you'll waste so much time just trying to get things installed and working correctly that you will hate your life.

Just get a Zenbook or a Surface book. Both of those are just as aesthetically pleasing as a mac and you can still run any program and play any game you want. And better specs than a mac. I have a mac and love it for computer science type programming, but for engineering programs I would rather pull my fingernails off with a pair of pliers.
 
Yeah I wouldn't suggest getting a mac for engineering. I use inventor on my computer at school(windows) and in order for me to do that on my mac I would have to run bootcamp and double-boot, which is a pain in the ass. I would assume it would be a similar situation for the programs you're running
 
I would suggest a Sony Vaio if they were still making them but they're doing the whole tablet/book bullshit now. I love my laptop I have a Sony M series
 
If you do end up getting a Mac, definitely get it through Apples certified refurbished. They're a good 200-400$ cheaper and are pretty much like new. I got my Macbook Pro 256 gb SSD for like 990$ i think a while ago. I've had no problems and it was pretty much like new. The only downside is it doesn't come with the full packaging.

But a PC would probably be easier for running the engineering programs and would be less of a pain.
 
Dont get a mac, the majority of software available, at least free provided software, is on windows. Obviously there are ways of getting around this but its just not worth it. (ChemEng 3rd year)
 
Alright so macs have been crossed off my list. Can anyone compare the XPS with a Zenbook?
 
i would suggest macbook, and get windows bootcamp software for all the engineering programs you need. Buddy of mine uses bootcamp for a few finance related programs and they run very smoothly. Overall, Macs are much better machine, in my opinion, especially for all the things you plan on having to do.

Side note, had my mac stolen last year (luckily recovered it a week later) and had a windows operated computer for the interim and had nothing but troubles with it. granted it wasn't the most expensive model, but I found the operating system to be a pain in the ass and for streaming videos it was incredibly slow, but again this is probably due to it being relatively cheap ($500).
 
13603570:-WZ- said:
Alright so macs have been crossed off my list. Can anyone compare the XPS with a Zenbook?
Click to expand...

I can't directly compare the two, however I think one you should take a look at is the HP omen
 
I finally gave up on my mac and purchased a lenovo thinkpad p40 yoga, at least for chemeng you absolutely need a windows unless you want to partition, software just isnt available for macs
 
13752576:90053 said:
I finally gave up on my mac and purchased a lenovo thinkpad p40 yoga, at least for chemeng you absolutely need a windows unless you want to partition, software just isnt available for macs
Click to expand...

serious deja vu
 
13752576:90053 said:
I finally gave up on my mac and purchased a lenovo thinkpad p40 yoga, at least for chemeng you absolutely need a windows unless you want to partition, software just isnt available for macs
Click to expand...

I just bought a yoga as well. The full size touch screen is nice, and a decent little machine for the price. A surface with similar specs is like 400 dollars more, windows is becoming apple I guess
 
Do not go apple. Especially if you're going to need to run a bunch of specific engineering programs. The compatibility issues just aren't worth it.
 
My college has a Citrix account that works like a charm. I your uni uses something like Citrix you can't go wrong with a new mac
 
I love my MBP but if I were in your shoes I would go with a PC, since bootcamp is a pain in the ass. I've heard great things about the Surface Book, although the GPU is on the weak side
 
MacBook Pro. I'm a chem major and run many programs on my laptop. I've also used my laptop for coding. Compatible with the majority of systems.
 
13602507:Kooky_Lukey said:
Don't get a mac if you're in engineering. Yeah you might eventually be able to get everything to run on it but you'll waste so much time just trying to get things installed and working correctly that you will hate your life.
Click to expand...

OSX you get the power of unix out of the box. Then just install homebrew or macports and you will get 90% of the packages you need running immediately from the terminal.

Most of the proprietary stuff you might want/need (MATLAB, simulink, labview, mathematica, excel) will install to osx. You might need to dual boot for CAD software or some other specific packages, but the power you gain from having OSX is worth it.

Windows is a pain in the ass to get set up nicely. And if you need a unix specific package it can be a nightmare to build from source with cygwin. Although you can always dual boot or run linux virtually.

My brother did his undergrad in mechanical engineering. He did 95% of his work in OSX on his macbook pros. Dual booted for the other 5%.
 
Let's hope he found a laptop by now. Thread was created in January..

Let's talk laptops I guess, I use a Dell XPS 13 and it is a solid laptop overall.
 
I know next to nothing about computers and I'm not in engineering. However, I have a mac and can't do a lot of my school work on it.

For my Information Systems class, we do a lot with Microsoft Access which doesn't have a version for mac so I have to connect remotely or do my work on campus which is a hassle sometimes.

I also have to build a website for my marketing class and when I work on it through my mac it adds stuff to the code that my instructor doesn't want so I have to work on that on school computers.

However, for most things it works really well. Honestly for personal use it's great and for the price I got it at I can't complain. Battery is super nice. I can work all day and use 20-30% of my battery and often go a couple days between charging it. It's user friendly and for like basic assignments it works great.

Not sure if this is relevant for you, but I thought I'd throw it out there. Some schools have a suggested laptops/desktops for students section on their site. I'd look there to get some ideas too!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top