<p>Hello everyone. My S will be a freshman engineering student at TAMU next fall and I see that they are requiring the students to bring one of three preconfigured laptops. The one S has been using through high school is on it's last legs so we are biting the bullet and getting one of these for him for Christmas. I'm wondering if anyone has any insight into which would be the better choice. We are definitely getting a PC so it would be between the Dell latitude E7440 and the HP zbook 14. They both seem to have their good qualities. The Dell is SSD which is nice but the HP has 750 gb and fingerprint security. Any advice?</p>
<p>Take a look at this. <a href=“Bring Your Own Device | Texas A&M University Engineering”>http://engineering.tamu.edu/easa/areas/academics/byod</a></p>
<p>That’s where I saw the 2 laptops I’m looking at. Just wondering if anyone has any advise on which we should get.</p>
<p>My son got last year’s required computer, but with a 256 GB solid-state drive. It’s the Latitude 6540, which I’m sure is now hopelessly obsolete. I do recommend the SSD; it’s much faster booting up. I doubt your son will need 750 GB, but you could do what I did and add an external hard drive. You can get a 1 TB, USB 3.0 drive for around $60.</p>
<p>My son (also engineering) got the Dell XPS 15" laptop as an entering freshman almost 4 years ago. He was overdue for a computer, and this was his hs graduation gift. To this day, he loves it and finds it extremely useful. He’s never had a problem with it. When his groups are in a hurry and need to take a quick peek on a computer, they’ll often use his, he says, because it’s often the fastest one in the group. He lets me know every now and then with random texts and such that he loves it and is really grateful for it. I realize it’s “old” now, but it still works perfectly for him. To my knowledge, he’ll continue to use it for engineering grad school over these next few years.</p>
<p>Here’s some copying and pasting from his order form from May 2011:
2nd generation Intel Core i7-2720QM processor 2.20 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.30 GHz
8GB,DDR3,2 DIMM
NVIDIA GeForce GT540M 2GB graphics with Optimus
750GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
Windows 7 Professional, 64bit, English</p>
<p>There will be new stuff today, but he finds these parameters to be more than sufficient.</p>
<p>Good luck to your son! :)</p>
<p>I have two engineering students (mechanical and general) currently - senior and a freshman - and both said they prefer the 15’ screen size because it fits in their backpacks and they carry their laptops around campus every day.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone. I think both PCs listed are 14 " which is nice. I have a solid state laptop and love it but the dell is $200 more. Of course they are both ridiculously expensive 
We are going to have to make up our minds soon - Christmas is around the corner! </p>
<p>My son got an 15" Macbook Pro. All the engineering students and non-engineering students he hangs around with have Macbooks. Nice and powerful but a little pricey. If your kid is into the Apple ecosystem with an iPhone and an iPad they do work well together.</p>
<p>@kldat1 that’s so interesting. I always heard that the engineers used PCs. That just makes the decision even more difficult :)</p>
<p>Same here, kldat1. Our son’s a freshman this year and bought the 15" Macbook Pro, and loves it! </p>
<p>I doubt that Mac’s outsell PCs. Contact Cooper Miley (<a href="mailto:cmiley@datanetworks.com">cmiley@datanetworks.com</a>) the program manager at edutechU. Cooper handles the Dell A&M sales for edutechU and could probably give you a breakdown.</p>
<p>Thanks Beaudreau. I’m leaning toward the HP mostly because it’s $200 less. And I’m not sure the SSD on the dell is worth that much. I did notice that the smaller Dell has touchscreen, which would be nice. I’m just not sure if that might be getting kind of small for working on. </p>
<p>Hi, I am a future A&M student planning on majoring in either Computer Engineering or Science. Looking at the 3 choices, I really like the mac. What I’m wondering is how much storage space I need. How much will I use being at A&M? I guess I will have alot of programs to install? Also, would this be used as my college and personal computer? I have a old 2010 macbook which has slowed down on me. I have about 150gb of photos I need to move off of it. </p>
<p>But if I get the mac then I have to buy windows and parallels… vs. nothing extra for the pc/</p>
<p>@patstar5, it will be your choice as to whether or not to use your new computer for personal use as well as school use. It’s still going to belong to you, not the college, so you get to choose.</p>
<p>My son, a senior, didn’t have to purchase from a list of approved laptops – the choice was more open-ended for him. He uses his Dell for both work and play. His is almost 4 years old now, but it has the same storage as your HP choice – a 750GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive. That has been plenty of storage for him for the duration and for both work and play. He has a bunch of storage leftover. (He doesn’t store a ton of photographs, though.)</p>
<p>I guess it’s a little bit apples to oranges when you compare the 256GB Solid State on the Dell and the 256GB PCIe-based flash storage on the MacBook (I’m not even familiar with that one) to the 750GB 7200RPM SATA.</p>
<p>Anyway, my son’s Dell is his only computer, he uses it for everything he does, and it has plenty of storage left. There has never been a problem.</p>
<p>One thing I seem to recall – a lot of the kids don’t load all of the necessary programs on their laptops. Some, like my son, will avoid loading the biggest behemoths and instead use the school’s computers when they have to run those programs. So that saves some storage space on their own devices. But now I’m sitting here wondering if maybe the college of engineering plans to discontinue the upkeep of those school computers, now that they’re mandating specific laptops for their incoming students?? Hmmm… (it’s just a wonder, i don’t want to start a rumor or anything!)</p>
<p>And yes, if you get the mac, you have to buy the $80 Parallels Windows emulating software, too … vs. nothing extra for the pc’s.</p>
<p>Best of luck to you! :)</p>