<p>I'm planning on attending Northeastern this fall and am majoring in computer science. I have been using desktops my whole life and I need to get out and finally buy a laptop for college. I've been a PC kid my whole life and am most comfortable with PCs but my school uses Macs so I am also familiar with using a Mac. </p>
<p>So, what laptop should I be getting and what specs are a must. I was thinking 8 GB of RAM should suffice. So PC or Mac and what specs?</p>
<p>The reality is that most people in CS use a unix system - meaning either Linux or Mac. You’ll end up using stuff like command line a lot, and things work differently (and generally worse…) on a PC. I’ve used Linux since getting my own laptop. I think almost all of the programs you use (Ecclipse, DrRacket) are available cross-platform.</p>
<p>If you get a Mac, you’ll be paying more and have less flexibility. If you get a PC, you’ll be fine, but you’ll probably want to learn and dual-boot Linux at some point in your college career. Actually, you’ll probably want to learn Linux no matter what - it’s a huge resume boost, if nothing else. Also, I’m definitely biased on this, since I’ve never been a fan of Apple’s highly proprietary structure and the limited flexibility, and I’ve been using linux (Ubuntu and variants) since I got my first computer. I love it and it’s great for all my classes.</p>
<p>As for specs, 8 GB RAM would definitely be sufficient. You’re not going to be doing high-powered, processor/memory intensive stuff (at least at first…), so you don’t need a power-house. I have a laptop with 4 GB RAM and it does everything I need. Heck, I’m pretty sure I could manage it on my 4 year old netbook with 1 GB of RAM and a 1.6 GHz processor.</p>
<p>@nanotechnology, So you’re saying to go with the Mac for now and learn how to just boot linux on it later? Or are you saying to go with the PC.</p>
<p>Yeah, I kind of went on a finals-crazed rant…</p>
<p>Go with what you’re comfortable with. If you get a PC, you will likely have to learn linux at some point in your college career (not really a bad thing). If you get a Mac, you probably won’t have to.</p>
<p>OK, I’m also unix biased. There have got to be programmers out there who use Windows, right?</p>