<p>I'll learn Mechanical Engineering during my college education. Now I'm wondering what kind of laptop do I need? Should I buy a super one, with a great processor, a powerful display card and so on? I know it will be used to run softwares like Matlab, Autodesk Inventor or such kind of things. </p>
<p>Which brand should I choose? Dell, HP, Mac, Asus, Sony or else? I'm a Dell fan and have been using a Dell desktop for more than five years without any serious problems. But someone says that Dell is now not as good as it was. </p>
<p>If you're going to a school with decent computer labs then you might not need a laptop at all. I prefer working on desktops due to the larger screens, larger keyboards, having a numpad (a must when dealing with homeworks involving lots of calculations), and they tend to be quieter since you don't have the fans and junk sitting close to ear level.</p>
<p>I made it through undergrad fine without ever using a laptop, and I can probably count on one hand how many times my roommate of three years that had a laptop actually took his outside of our apartment (he was a computer engineer).</p>
<p>I'd recommend waiting until after freshman year to buy a laptop anyway. Then you can get one with your student discount and it won't be on the verge of being outdated by the time you're a senior (when you'll probably be doing most of your worthwhile classes).</p>
<p>I prefer a desktop. Consider a laptop if you travel or go home. But even if you do so, you can carry your external HD and do stuff at home.</p>
<p>You need at least 1GB RAM now for Autodesk Inventor, or else you can't run the program. Even with my 1GB RAM, the program sometimes feels a bit slow. YOu don't need a powerful display card - just anything better than integrated graphics will be fine for Inventor.</p>
<p>I'd recommend you wait until you're enrolled and then see what the school might offer with student discounts. Some schools (Stevens for example) actually provide their undergrads with laptops as part of the tuition fee.</p>
<p>Some schools require you to have certain model laptops. When some of my friends went to polytechnic, they were charged $4000 for a laptop in addition to their tuition. So you may or may not have a choice.</p>
<p>Laptops are good if you're cramped for space in your room. They're also good if you're the type of person that likes to do their work all over the place because of portability. I take mine all over the place... I think I actually do most of my work outside of my room. It's really more of a convenience than a necessity though. If you live far away and don't want to ship your computer to campus, a laptop would be better. </p>
<p>My family has always used Compaq's/HP's. I love HP... we've had 4 of their desktops, 3 printers, one laptop, one calculator, and a partridge in a pear tree. No problems at all in these 10+ years.</p>
<p>Any recommendations on laptops for solidworks, aim, internet, microsoft word, and maybe matlab? I'm planning to do an internship that uses solidworks, and I would really like to have a copy at my disposal in case I need to finish any work at night or something.</p>
<p>You may not be allowed to work on company material at non-company locations or on non-company-owned software. I don't know if you're technically allowed to use a student edition of solidworks in any sort of for-profit venture (and it's questionable if the company would allow you to install a copy of their software on your personal computer).</p>
<p>I'd ask around at the company you're going to be working at if such a thing is typical or not.</p>
<p>It seems that my college cooperates with Lenovo, which can provide Thinkpad laptops with students discount about 37%. Is Lenovo good at engineering? My friend said it's more suitable for business purposes.</p>
<p>doesn't matter...the hardware wasn't designed for an extremely specific application. and it's not like business requires anything more advanced than a 10 year old computer....</p>
<p>The Thinkpads that my friends had 3-4 years ago tended to be on the smallish side of laptops. They ran great, were nice and compact, but they tended to chug a little for heavier applications. If you want a real powerhouse of a laptop, get ready to lug around a pretty heavy brick and lose a considerable amount of battery life (and pay a heck of a lot more than you would for a comparable tower).</p>
<p>Personally, I'd just build myself a new desktop and buy a lower-end laptop that's very portable for when I really need it on the run.</p>
<p>Also, if you buy anything, be sure it's dual core. Those things are a blessing when you're running CPU-intensive software.</p>
<p>well i m not bright when it comes to computers. I have two pcs one with dual core and other normal both with 3.0 ghz processor speed and 1 gb ram. but the normal one seems to be faster. What actually is the use of dual core processor?</p>
<p>S is a mechanical engineering major. He uses a Dell laptop. He likes the ability to take it with him when he so chooses. He also has a separate wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, and flatscreen monitor so it has the conveniences of a desktop. We found that when we purchased his laptop, we got a better machine and price by checking out the Dell sales the summer before his freshman year than that we would have gotten through the university discount program.</p>
<p>Agreeing with everyone else that you really don't need to plunk down the money for a computer, unless you like to type your lecture notes. Anything really crunchy, you'll want to use a lab computer, or if you've got a job, they'll provide you with a computer and necessary software there. Industry software is $uper-expen$ive... You just don't need to invest in that sort of thing, because it'll set you back a ton of money (or you'll steal it, which companies you work for really, really don't like because THEY can get sued by software manufacturers if they're audited and you happen to have your laptop on the premises) and whenever you're required to use it, you'll be given access to it... (tip: don't work on internship stuff at night at home. If you need to put in extra hours, do it at the office so people can SEE you wave to them as they're on their way out the door for the evening! Way more brownie points, which is what internships are really all about, when you get right down to it.)</p>
<p>I love my Macbook. I do a lot of photography and music whatnot, so Mac was an easier platform for me to work with for a lot of that. I haven't fired up my desktop PC at home in about a year, as it physically pains me to do so. My Macbook has an Intel processor (as Macbooks tend to have...), so I could hypothetically install Windows and run my work software on it, but even in grad school, I'd just use it for taking notes and IM and e-mail and photo retouching and personal stuff, and whenever I needed to do any serious work, I could head down to the lab where I could concentrate more, and after I graduated, I could head to the office to do my work there. It's really nice for me to have the mental divide between heavy-computational-work-computer/everything-else-computer.</p>
<p>Note-taking is a breeze with the Mac. I use Omnigraffle for diagramming (my stencil set for note-taking is up on Graffletopia, if anybody's interested) and I'd just insert the diagrams into my text notes on the fly. I used Microsoft Word for all the text stuff mainly because I didn't care enough to find anything better.</p>
<p>Were I into gaming, I might not have chosen the Mac, but as it stands... I love my Macbook.</p>