DS will be a freshman next month. Thinking of engineering or mathematics. Have $$ for a laptop but not sure what kind to get. Any thoughts? (Wondered if Mac would run CAD and other engineering programs…)
Most school would have recommendation on the laptop or desktop. I would recommend a Windows laptop.
Windows will be your best bet for general software compatibility. It’ll also be far, far cheaper relative to the hardware, which I imagine is important for engineering.
My experience with CAD (specifically Autodesk Inventor suite) is almost 6 years old (from early high school), but unless things have changed since then, CAD does not run on mac. I had a virtual machine running on my mac with windows through parallels. In my experience though, more and more software is becoming available for mac also. For math, a mac would be fine.
With CAD, the best laptops that are also affordable and “liked” by schools are the Thinkpad and Acer Aspire
You can run Windows on a Mac via a feature called Bootcamp, so the Windows vs. Mac debate doesn’t really apply.
^ I agree. There are a couple ways to run Windows on Mac. Plenty of engineering students have Macs and they don’t run into any problems running their CAD software.
In the end, your “best” laptop will be a mixture of your purpose, hardware and tech preferences along with your personal preferences on how you want your laptop to look and feel.
Side note: There are CAD programs that run on Mac. AutoCAD is one of them.
You can get a Macbook and install Windows via Bootcamp. The Macbook build quality is superb and the only windows laptop that can compare in terms of build quality and elegance is the Razer Blade (which is a gaming notebook worth thousands of dollars.) However, if you are not so picky about build quality, Dell’s XPS 13 2015 model is pretty good. I don’t really like Dell but this laptop seems to make me accept Dell a little bit. It’s a 13 inch laptop in a 11 inch platform. But it all depends on preference!
As far as everyday work (like writing papers, organizing pictures, etc.) goes, I find Macs far more comfortable and pleasing to use. But a lot of engineering software really only seems to work with Windows. I will have both (though my MacBook only cost $250 on craigslist and my Windows computer was free from my dad’s work because they were getting rid of some.) Windows access is likely a must for engineering. Access to Mac systems would be nice for less technical work if possible.
Almost all of my engineering friends have Macs and run programs as needed on a VM.