Best Laptop for an engineering student who uses auto cad programs.

CosmicWolf293

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May 29, 2015
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So I need a laptop that is light enough and powerful enough. The portability of the laptop is very important since I spend alot of times on commuting. I am on the train for about 2hrs per day and my university is pretty big, so I have to move from place to place. My individual research has made me think about purchasing the Dell XPS 15 i7...I also like the alienware 13 r3 .... alienware 15 r3 seems really heavy. The MSI ge62 looks good aswell however I do like the mobility of the xps. So what do you think, which is the best for the price. Any other laptops I should consider?
 
Solution
I would start with whatever brand your university has a deal/discount with, if any. Most universities will have a primary supplier and they make their discount available to students through a portal. Limits your choices somewhat, but you can knock $100 off the price fairly easily.

You've made some decent choices, but if you want overload, check out Xoticpc.com, they carry pretty much every brand and model from everybody that has high performance parts and even true OEM laptops.

Eximo

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I would start with whatever brand your university has a deal/discount with, if any. Most universities will have a primary supplier and they make their discount available to students through a portal. Limits your choices somewhat, but you can knock $100 off the price fairly easily.

You've made some decent choices, but if you want overload, check out Xoticpc.com, they carry pretty much every brand and model from everybody that has high performance parts and even true OEM laptops.
 
Solution

TJ Hooker

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What kind of engineering? I went through most of electrical engineering with a budget notebook with a T4400 CPU (2.2 GHz dual core from 2010) and integrated graphics. Don't ever remember needing more performance.

From what I remember in uni, pretty much everyone who had a laptop in class mostly just used it for surfing the web and not paying attention. Only type of computer that really seemed to benefit lectures/notetaking was a tablet/2-in-1 type with a stylus.
 

Eximo

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There is some truth to that. First two years are mostly math and science courses. Though some programs have you hit labs for CAD or Chemistry software pretty early on. Always the school's computers for that too.

Computer Science/Engineering majors generally don't need the most powerful machines ever.

But anything with fluids, audio, stress calculations, maybe. I work at an engineering company, and we give our guys some monster machines (and because we have usage licensing on some of our software, so the faster a render or calculation the better)
 

TJ Hooker

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Yeah, I didn't do any CAD or chemistry stuff. Basically used my laptop for a bit of coding, circuit simulation, and MATLAB (mathematical calculations for stuff like signal processing and electromagnetics). That kind of stuff, at least at the scale/level I was working at in uni, performed fine on my laptop. There were maybe one or two other pieces of software that I remember using in a couple labs that seemed like they may have benefitted from more horsepower, but they were the type with strict licensing that I could only use on the PCs in the lab anyway. I upgraded to a fairly beefy laptop during my last year (i7-3630QM, GTX 670MX), but that was only because I wanted my laptop to be able to be my primary gaming machine.