<p>Hello, I will be attending Tennessee Tech University as a chemical engineering major this fall and I was wondering what would be the best labtop for this major. I've been looking at the lenovo thinkpads and I think I would really like one of them. The W520 looks like it has a ton of power, great graphics, and even battery life so would that be a good choice? The only think I don't like is it is kinda big(15.6 inches) but its still under 6 pounds so weight isn't terrible I guess. I would use it at my house more than school probably anyway so maybe size wouldn't be to big of a problem. Would you guys suggestion any other labtops over this one? Thanks for the advice.</p>
<p>There are tons of posts about “best laptop for engineering”, “best laptop for CS”. Search those through google with keyword “collegeconfidential”.</p>
<p>Simply put, whether you use it at home or not, I strongly recommend a lighter laptop. What is the point of having a heavy, powerful laptop? What is the purpose of a laptop? It’s supposed to be portable. If you want to play game (like real gamers), none of these laptops will fit your need. For academic purpose, I strongly recommend anything less than 4 lbs. Anything between $400 ~ $600 will be enough. You are only an undergraduate student, you are not going to run supercomputer applications. </p>
<p>I am a Lenovo user, and I have Edge 14. Google some coupons and sign up for student discount newsfeed on Lenovo. There are other good brands other than Lenovo.</p>
<p>If you are like me (hate carrying laptop with me), save yourself a problem by getting something lightweight, portable, and still durable. I have written pages of how to choose laptops over the year here on collegeconfidential. Simply put, look at warranty, reputation, durability, and most importantly, price. I personally don’t like HP computers because they are expensive and very heavy. </p>
<p>Battery life? Just use the charger. Remember, laptop is supposed to be an aid. I don’t like using laptop, and I really don’t program a lot on my laptop because it’s small screen. </p>
<p>PS: If you are going to use Lenovo, make sure you are comfortable learning how to use the little red dot. Using a mouse on a Lenovo laptop is kinda funny because after using the red dot I find it better than a mouse (unless I am tired, or frustrated I go back to the touchpad). Anyway :]
Any CPU is good. 2GB is good eough. 250GB is good enough. Whatever comes in as default, keep it. I really think any upgrade for $100, $200 is not worth it, unless you are going to use it all the time (and running intensive computations which people won’t even bother to do it on a laptop). Even so, I have ran MATLAB and several other intense computation on 512MB laptop.</p>
<p>I had this dilemma a year ago. I just completed my first year in engineering at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Ill be starting my sophomore year in Chemical Engineering this fall. Take this from someone who has already completed two semesters on a college campus and living in a dorm (which from the sounds of it you may not): disregard battery life and portability. Honestly, I had honestly always said when it came time to buy a laptop that those two factors would be my primary concerns. I’m glad I disregarded them as I couldn’t be happier with my 16.4" 1080p Sony VAIO. Coming into college you really have misconceptions about just how often you’ll be hauling your laptop to class. Laptops in class are for liberal arts and business majors whose notes take the form of words and not numbers. But even they wont end up bringing their laptop to class as much as they assume. As an engineering major, you’ll likely never bring your laptop to any of your classes. It’s simply too difficult to take notes with them for engineering classes. You won’t need it in physics or chemistry. In fact my Chem 2 professor would not even allow them, in a lecture of over 400 people (that nobody ended up going to anyways because his lectures were worthless, but that’s beside the point). I don’t recall anybody trying to use them in my math classes, but I’m 100% certain the professor wouldn’t have allowed it. If you have to take English you’ll find English lectures are worthless, there’s nothing worthy of bringing a laptop to class for, you’ll write your papers on your own time. I only regularly brought my laptop to class for one class and that was Geography. And I never had a problem packing it up in the morning and getting to class. Buy a good backpack and you’ll be fine. I also took my laptop with me to the library all the time, but there were outlets all over the place, so battery life was irrelevant. </p>
<p>You’ll find that 99% of the time your computer will stay sitting on your desk. And if that laptop is small, wimpy, and not powerful, it will be frustrating. Go ahead and get a desktop replacement. You will enjoy the size and power while studying in your dorm or at the library, where you will undoubtedly be plugged into an outlet. Make sure it has a nice comfortable keyboard and a nice screen, those factors will become alot more important than portability and battery life.</p>
<p>Thanks for both of your repleys. And Nate09 I don’t plan on taking it to any classes at school besides my engineering classes which chemical engineers at tn tech are required to have and bring a labtop for the lab part of the classes this year for the MOLE SI program they use in the labs. Even though I don’t really know much about it. I think your right though about wanting a powerful labtop with a good screen and a good keyboard. Which the W520 should have that from the reviews I have seen(and battery life may just be a bonus even if I don’t need it). Thanks again for both of your repleys.</p>
<p>If you think there is at least one class you might take your laptop to on a regular basis, I would go with a moderate size laptop. As Jwxie said, a laptop is suppose to be portable. For undergrad, I bought a 17.3 inch goliath. Even if you don’t see yourself taking it to class, the weight and size is incredibly inconvenient. It was a hassle if I ever wanted to bring it to a group meeting or a coffee shop to work on a project. I went with a 15.6 inch with my last laptop and couldn’t be happier with my choice. I carry it with me about half of the time.</p>
<p>As for processing power, an i5 CPU would be a balance of power and battery life. Most of the time, my new laptops i7 -2720 QM never needs more than %15 of its base speed, nor does it need to turbo boost. I only have 2 programs that can even benefit from a quad core, however that will change as more software writers adapt. If you are curious how CPUs and GPUs compare to each other, there is a nifty site called [Notebook</a> / Laptop Reviews and News - Notebookcheck.net](<a href=“Notebookcheck - Page not Found!”>http://www.notebookcheck.net/)
that has comparisons and benchmarks under the FAQ tab as well as lots of reviews. Just be aware that many reviews are of European models that are spec’d slightly different.</p>
<p>Lenovo is a solid brand. If you buy one of their thinkpads you will have quality computer that will last you a long time. I took the risk of buying another HP just because it had the specs I was looking forward for a reasonable price. ( I found a %30 coupon code on line).</p>
<p>Hope that helps a little. Good luck.</p>
<p>What you might want to do is look at your curriculum and ask professors or your advisor what programs you’ll be using for your undergrad courses. Then search for the system requirements for those programs and find a computer that meets those. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that you want to be able to keep your laptop for 5-10 years, So, I would buy a laptop with a high end processor and a lot of room to upgrade memory. You shouldn’t worry about having the best video cards/audio cards unless you’re doing something extra-curricular that might necessitate putting in the extra money. Also, hard drives are easy to swap out, so it might be a good idea to invest in an external incase you need to upgrade to a bigger/better HD in the future. Besides that I’d put consideration into weight, size, and battery life. You’re probably going to be lugging the thing to and around campus so ideally you’d want something light and small enough to fit into a backpack or messenger bag. Battery life is pretty self explanatory. </p>
<p>Right now I’m using a 2011 13.5" MacBook pro. I have 4GB of RAM in it (with the capability to upgrade to 8GB) and it runs pretty flawlessly. The only programs I’ve needed to use so far are the MS Office Suite (Excel, Word, PP, etc.) and MATLAB, both of which I was able to obtain OS X versions from my school. In the future we might need to use Aspen Hysys but I dont think we’ll be provided with, or need, personal copies. If I ever needed to use a Windows-only program, it’s very easy to use a VM to run Windows or boot up in Windows instead of OS X, provided you have a copy.</p>
<p>Did this man really write “labtop”?</p>
<p>WO. Yakyu. Astonishing!
Yeah I think we should correct that. It’s laptop, not labtop. :] Heck, I used to write labtop too! </p>
<p>Thumbs up for Yakyu!</p>
<p>Yeah, backing up what ElevateMeLater said. Now you can dual boot with Windows (or simply run Windows under virtual machine app).</p>
<p>Definitely look into the curriculum. Is there any ChemE here that can help?</p>
<p>If you are going to live in a dorm, far away from your home, and you want to play game you probably want a powerful laptop, if not, a tower desktop. But I think the temptation of playing games at school distract us from being productive. So the trade off is: why not get something that is good enough and can still play, provided that you have an external keyboard and a mouse? I would rather to save the bucks for Wii, or xBox, or PS3, and bring it to the dorm. It’s more fun than playing on laptop (as a group, of course).</p>
<p>You want something at least 14". 14" Is alreadytoo small IMO. 15 - 16 if you are dorming. </p>
<p>Finally, pick the one you really like! Just because we say MacBook for the win, you shouldn’t get it if you don’t like Mac. I don’t like Mac (I used to want to get it).</p>
<p>fyi. it’s a laptop. not labtop. lol.</p>
<p>The battle of Mac and PC. Buy which ever you are more comfortable with and like better. However be aware that you will likely have to spend twice as much to get the same components in a Mac vs a PC. </p>
<p>As an engineering student, you shouldn’t have time to be a serious gamer. However you don’t have to buy a hefty gamer laptop or desktop to play today’s games if you are into that.</p>