<p>Recommendations from those who are in engineering, please. Just got back from freshmen orientation. We spoke to some of the Wired Out employees and they seemed to prefer PC over Mac for engineering students and HP over Dell. </p>
<p>HP over Dell an accurate assessment?</p>
<p>Has anyone had any experience with Wired Out? They offer 3 year on-campus and accidental damage protection with some of their HP Elitebooks. After doing a brief online search, their prices seem to be equal or a bit better than what we are finding with the online retailers. How is their warranty service? </p>
<p>Are we better off getting a laptop directly from HP (or Dell) and getting their on-site warranty?</p>
<p>And as far as the laptop is concerned, what would be an acceptable size of processor (i7, i5 ?), RAM, and video?</p>
<p>Basically, most engineering programs are Windows only, so regardless of what type of computer you buy, HP vs Dell vs Mac, you are going to want it to run Windows. I say just go with your personal preference and just make sure it has decent RAM, processing speed, and hard drive space. Some programs are going to be too intensive for your laptop to handle (which is normal unless you are willing to pay like 3k for a laptop) but there are computer labs around campus with the programs on them for you to get your work done.</p>
<p>I personally went with a Mac because I love the software and that is what I prefer. I am bootcamping into Windows and dedicating a decent amount of hard drive space to that partition so I can run my engineering programs.</p>
<p>Their service generally requires you to leave the laptop with them for some time until a tech can look it over and order parts if needed. They don’t stock much in the way of parts. My son got the HP 3 year warranty (manufacturer warranty) with onsite service and has used them for two service calls (for sticky keys and such) and they were good. You call HP to see if they can talk you through a repair, and if not, they schedule to come to you and get it fixed. He has not used the Wired Out on campus repair because they wanted to keep his laptop overnight or longer just to diagnose it when he only had minor issues.</p>
<p>We bought a laptop directly from HP. We also bought the additional warranty with on-site service. Fortunately (or unfortunately), she never had to use it. I don’t know what to say as far as technical requirements because I am a non-techie, but I do remember her saying that her programs took up a lot of space on her computer.</p>