Engineering - mac or pc?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Cornell University
1

<p>Hey all,</p>

<p>I am in incoming Freshman to the College of Engineering at Cornell and have a couple questions about choosing a mac or pc for engineering. Right now I'm planning on majoring in mechanical engineering with a minor in economics and / or pre-law. (maybe too much haha i know, we'll see how it goes). A document found on Cornell's website says that for MechE and aerospace engineering either Mac OSX or Windows is recommended and all other engineering majors recommend windows. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/advising/orientation/upload/2010-Computer-Recommendations-Final.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/advising/orientation/upload/2010-Computer-Recommendations-Final.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I was wondering are there any engineering using a mac? and how do they find the compatability with all the programs they need? I've used windows for most of my life, but am familiar with mac osx. Some new features of mac osx are making me really consider it as an operating system, especially with the soon debut of Lion (airdrop, thunderbolt, etc). Plus, I really like mac's asthetics, much more than windows. I am considering a mac book pro (either 13 or 15in, probably 15) versus any other pc (probably lenovo, as they are industry standard and are used by intel and ibm employees). </p>

<p>I am not set in stone on majoring in mechanical engineering, and was wondering if any mac users can share they're experience and if any windows advocates can offer their advice.</p>

<p>Oh and also, any opinions of dual booting windows 7 onto the mac? not just virtual machine, but actually partitioning the hard drive?</p>

<p>Thanks!!</p>

2

<p>Not sure if you can do minor in economics here… minor in business sure. Pre-law isn’t a track or requires certain courses. You just need to keep a safe 3.7+ GPA (Cornell engineering avg GPA is ~2.7-3.0) and do well on your LSATs.</p>

<p>Loads of engineers use macs. No brick wall issues that I can think of or heard about from friends but some programs like SolidWorks and ANSYS are safer for compatibility if run on PC’s. I’m in mechE and my friends do fine with macs. I have a PC mostly because I’m a gamer so much more convenient.</p>

3

<p>Thanks for the reply!</p>