<p>I'm starting to look for laptops for next year at college, and I really like the look of Apple laptops. They're lighter, and more fun than PC's. But I plan on going into Engineering, so will it be hard to use a Mac with engineering programs? Would anyone recommend a Mac over a PC, or vice versa? Or does it not really matter? Thanks for the help!</p>
<p>I would not recommend a Mac, but I would check with the school that you are going to.</p>
<p>I have a iMac desktop and I am doing computer science. I couldn't do my Scheme problem sets on my home computer, but I could easily "log into" the campus' system using "ssh" from my home computer much easier than if I had a PC because Mac OS X is UNIX based. So, basically I can do anything on my Mac that I could do on the campus computer network.</p>
<p>Everything I did in Java ran on a Mac.</p>
<p>A lot of my professor's use Macs and make fun of Windows.</p>
<p>You won't get viruses on your Mac, so you won't have to continually download patches from Microsoft.</p>
<p>I'm happy I have a Mac, but see what sort of software you have to run at your dorm.</p>
<p>What about programs that only run on windows? What do you mean by log in using ssh?</p>
<p>Programs that only run on Windows can't be run. From what I have seen, important programs can run on both.</p>
<p>MIT has a computer netwrok that has all the programs and stuff that anyone needs at the school. ssh means I can sorta log into one of those machines and do everythign it can do on my computer, only slower.</p>