<p>Are there recommendations - departmental or parental - for laptop specs for engineering majors?</p>
<p>I will let others say which machine is best, but something to add to your list is a backup drive! I recommend that you get a separate hard drive that your student LEAVES in their dorm room and get them to perform backups on a regular (ie daily when doing big projects, weekly at a minimum) basis. They should also have a couple of jump drives where they can perform quick backups as they work on big projects. I have heard horror stories of computers crashing, getting dropped & stepped on, stolen, etc before big projects are due and all work is lost. If they do regular backups they should at most lose a day or so of work. It does not have to be a big drive, but make sure they leave it in their room. It will do them no good if their backpack is stolen or lost and both their computer and backup drive was in there (yes I heard that story also ;(</p>