<p>I'll be heading to college next fall, and I have a few questions as I prepare for buying a computer.</p>
<p>1) How often do engineering students use laptops in class and for what purposes? </p>
<p>2) How often to engineering students use resource-intensive applications (e.g., CAD programs) on their personal computers? Is this type of work more commonly done in labs? </p>
<p>3) Given the answers to the previous two questions and a budget of about $2000, what would be the best route (laptop; desktop & laptop; desktop & netbook/tablet; etc.)?</p>
<p>1) I never use it in class because I take notes in a notebook. Some people use it to take notes; most end up going on facebook.</p>
<p>2) You will find campus computers that will be able to use CAD, so it’s not necessary to have a computer that can run it, but it sure can help–especially when you get to upper division classes that require some project. I use CAD in the lab I work in but on the lab computers. One thing you may use a lot of is programming languages.</p>
<p>3) Ok, hold on. Laptops are not nearly that expensive. You will only need one computer, a laptop. You will be able to find a high powered laptop for half of that price. Tablets are pretty much only for vanity. Just make sure you get one with a good CPU and a decent graphics card if you plan on running CAD. For reference, I bought my laptop for $450 and it runs CAD well (HP g6).</p>
<p>If you are taking classes with a lot of powerpoints with figures to annotate, tablets can be useful (i.e., biology classes) because you can easily write directly on the slides and have everything in color. But that likely won’t be the case. Don’t worry about a tablet.</p>
<p>For math-type classes (which includes most engineering classes), pencil and paper is the route to take. Drawing diagrams and writing equations is not going to happen on a laptop.</p>
<p>This means your computer will be mostly used for homework. I agree with both of the previous posters: you don’t need a $2000 laptop. I’d recommend 8 GB of RAM (though the cheapest route is probably to get something with less and pop in an upgrade to 8 GB yourself), but other than that, anything with decent graphics and CPU should get the job done. You can spend under $800 for a laptop with specs that should keep up through college.</p>
<p>I dont think you’ll need a desktop and a laptop. I think you should get a laptop and tablet if you really think you need a tablet. Getting a laptop is a must and under 800$ (unless you’re planning to buy a mac or something) </p>