Laptop For College

[krystianb10]

Hello,
I am going to be attending an Engineering school for software engineering, and its not required but I want to get a laptop.
1) Mac or Pc
2) What kind of specs should i look for to run engineering programs well. (I know a somewhat alot on computer hardware)
3) Do you think that I would be able to go through engineering without a laptop and with just a really good desktop??
Thanks

 

[AntiZig]

1) If you're going for computer science I'd recommend to get a windows machine as later you will probably install linux on it anyways.

Here's I'm a little confused, are you taking computer science or engineering program?
because software doesn't exactly get engineered... and as an engineer you don't develop a lot of software.

2) but anyways, unless you play video games, you don't really need a killer laptop, something like i3-i5 with 4gb of ram will be fine for your tasks. everything else by preference.

3) can you go through college without a laptop? that question you should be asking yourself not other people...
can you get a desktop with same/better specs for cheaper? absolutely, if you can build it yourself. But at the same time this "really good" has me confused. Do you need it to be really good for gaming or something else? because none of the school programs that you will need to use will be hardware intensive.

 

[krystianb10]

Well ive heard that programs such as Matlab and others are a bit hardware intensive and some involve 3d graphics and require a decent gpy. And what i mean by really good is that instead of buying a decent laptop i could get a much better desktop that would last me longer(better processor, more ram, better graphics card).

I forgot to mention my budget is around $1000

Thanks!

 

[krystianb10]

bump

 

[AntiZig]

Well ive heard that programs such as Matlab and others are a bit hardware intensive and some involve 3d graphics and require a decent gpy. And what i mean by really good is that instead of buying a decent laptop i could get a much better desktop that would last me longer(better processor, more ram, better graphics card).

I forgot to mention my budget is around $1000

Thanks!

Matlab is hardware intensive? I don't know who you've been talking to but unless you specifically code it to run an infinite loop it can just fine on an old pentium M. 3d graphics the most that you would do in matlab is draw up a few surfaces/solids. If you would be doing intensive 3d or something like sensor data analysis in matlab in real-time (this could be intensive) then you will have desktop school computers available to you that will be up to the task.

on the second part you are absolutely correct, if you build your own desktop, you will get much better desktop for the same money, but you will loose out on having a personal computer with you in college. This part, as I said already, is by your personal preference.