Hi everyone,
I will be a freshman in Fall 2016 majoring in mechanical engineering.
Is it necessary to bring an expensive laptop to college, or can I bring my current desktop and 27" monitor to my dorm and use that instead?
Not an ME major here, but I don’t think it’s “necessary to bring” a laptop to college, expensive or otherwise. Many student get by without them, although they may live with certain inconveniences from the lack of portable computing power. These inconveniences are diminished by using the various computer labs around campus, the library, etc. My university, and I imagine many other colleges, even has a FREE laptop rental service where you can rent laptops (PC or Mac) for up to days at a time - just show your student ID and they set you up with a free school-provided rental laptop (or even an iPad!), and you just have to turn it in at the end of the day or make arrangements with them on an extended rental period. Otherwise, if you plan to be around campus most of the day, or stay in the dorms, there should be plenty of the computer labs available - just look into whether these computers in the labs have the proper software you may need to ME assignments if you plan to use them.
Otherwise, a desktop in your living space seems feasible to me. I have a PC laptop, but rarely actually take it off my home office desk. I probably take it to campus about 5 days out of the entire semester. Then again, I don’t take notes or anything on my laptop in class, although many (many) other students do.
In your intended situation, you definitely shouldn’t need an expensive machine. You could begin college with just your desktop, using computer labs, laptop rentals, friends laptops, etc, whenever you feel you need to and then evaluate if you need your own laptop. If so, then since you already have a capable desktop, you can be more conservative and get a relatively inexpensive machine to get you by, maybe with the idea to sell it a couple years to another needy freshman or donate it and get a tax-deductible receipt.
You might consider a Surface, which can be had for not a lot of money and is very light for carrying around.
I also would recommend a higher powered tablet with a keyboard for your standard note-taking and word processing.
Perhaps an iPad Air 2 or iPad Pro if you like Apple or a Surface Pro 4 if you’re tied into Windows.
I tried using my iPad Air 2 with a Bluetooth keyboard last semester and I hated it writing notes so I basically did it the old fashion way. I have a Surface pro 4 and I already love it and my semester hasn’t even started yet though I am thinking of a MacBook pro for $50 more. I love using One note and using the included surface pen to write my notes and it also converts it to text as well.
I went with the Pro 4 because of the larger screen but the Surface 3 or even the Surface pro 3 are still good deals. The Surface 3 I would suggest is the 128GB model since it has more spce plus 4GB of RAM while the base has only 64GB of storage and 2GB of RAM. The model I am suggesting is $599. The “optional” type cover is $129 and the surface pen which isn’t included in the Surface 3 or the i3 version of the pro 3 runs around $60. The Surface pro 3 i3 model is on sale at bestbuy and you can sign up for their student deals and get $100 off Surface pro devices and also other items like this month is that along with Macbooks, Blue label laptops and some other stuff.