<p>I've been thinking about my future computer plans, because my HP laptop won't be going forever, even though I love it so much. I plan on using it until next August, before I finally retire it (probably going to charity or trade-in, not sure yet). But I've noticed that some programmers on campus, especially on my research team, have two computers: a desktop and a portable (13"-ish) laptop, both with budgets of around $1000 (before I wanted a Sony Z or Apple MBP). </p>
<p>Does this combo work well? Is it convenient? (They claim it is)? </p>
<p>If I do go with this combo, I'll be buying my desktop around November or December, after Windows 7 comes out, and the laptop next summer.</p>
<p>My son just has a MacBook Pro which he does everything on including his research at his previous internship. Daughter is happy with hers. A desktop is nice if you want to play games or if you need to run compute-intensive work, especially while you need to use a computer for something else. You can pick up some very powerful systems in the used market. I have two Core i7 systems from Dell’s refurb site that cost me $570 each. These are 2.66 Ghz Quad-Core/8 hyperthread systems and they are very fast. They can accommodate up to 24 GB of RAM.</p>
<p>I’m a math major, but I take CS and engineering classes for fun, so I guess I can put my opinion out there. For the first year or so, having a desktop isn’t really necessary or even needed. You can do just fine with just a laptop. What I did was got a job and saved up money, bought parts and built a desktop. I partitioned Ubuntu and Windows 7 on my desktop and use Ubuntu on my laptop. That way unix-based programs or languages can be used on either computer. It seems your budget is much higher than mine, so you can easily afford whatever configuration you want on your desktop unless you want some insane video game machine. But, yeah, see how things go, is my opinion, with just a laptop. If you feel your current old laptop isn’t holding up, buy a new one and get a desktop later if you see fit. At the end of the day, I got a desktop because I wanted to play intricate games.</p>
<p>That’s exactly the configuration I’m using now. Desktop and 13" laptop dual booting ubuntu/windows 7. I rarely use windows unless I need to run something that’s incompatible and doesn’t work in wine. </p>
<p>I’ve also seen people with desktop/netbook combos. No matter what laptop you get, you just won’t get the processing power and comfortablilty of a desktop (given the same price range).</p>
<p>I’m a computer science major, btw, and the desktop helps alot.</p>
<p>The main issue with using 2 computers (any 2 computers) is keeping files synched. So, give that some thought before you take the plunge. At a minimum, you can keep your data on a USB drive, or network the computers together. How easy it is will determine whether you use one predominately (thus, do you really need the other?) , or easily switch between the two.</p>
<p>I suggest keeping the laptop until it really doesn’t do what you need it to do. Computers are always getting cheaper and faster. The longer you can delay your upgrade, the better the computer you will get. Maybe by then, the laptop, with a docking station, will be all you need.</p>
<p>My son is a freshmen. He is using his 5 year old desktop, and so far it is just fine. He is a business major (actuarial sciences), and may someday get into heavy statistical applications, but not yet.</p>
<p>It may end up that your laptop is just fine for laptop uses, and you need to buy a desktop for more horsepower doing homework.</p>
<p>A common way to keep your stuff synched is to email it to yourself. Use imap and leave it on the server. Gmail is great for that but most college systems have big limits. Some systems allow you to set up a personal storage area. These are true synch operations but most people only need to keep a few things straight.</p>
<p>We have a hosted web server, professionally backed up. Our son used to backup his stuff to the web server but he mostly uses Gmail for backing up projects now.</p>
<p>I considered doing this but ended up buying a nice mid-range (Sony VAIO SR, it ran me ~$1200) with some good specs and then just bought a relatively inexpensive monitor (21" hp), a keyboard, a wireless mouse, and a docking station and set my laptop up so it’s a desktop at home with a larger screen and a notebook when I want to take it with me. My concern was the same as OperaDad’s - keeping my fines synced between multiple computers, in addition to cost.</p>
<p>I’m a student who mostly uses statistical data analysis software in addition to the regular student tasks (taking notes, writing papers, surfing the net, playing a few emulators and movies and music) so I didn’t need anything extremely powerful; a P series Core 2 with a 2.4 GHz processor and 4 GB of RAM is enough for me. HDD space doesn’t even really matter since you can easily buy an external, but my computer has 320 and then I have an external with 250 so that’s 570 GB of space (not counting the MASSIVE load that Vista takes up, but whatever).</p>
<p>And oh yeah, Gspace is a great tool that uses the storage space on your Gmail account to store your files that you need to use among multiple computers - I use it to sync my notebook with my work computer in my cube.</p>
<p>Dropbox is a better tool for syncing your files, in my opinion.</p>
<p>You can always survive in an engineering program by using lab computers to run the heavy stuff and just typing papers and whatnot on a laptop. The question becomes: how much time do you want to spend in the lab?</p>