<p>Hello. So I am planning on going into engineering and I need some help choosing a laptop. My main concerns are which processor, how much ram, how much storage, and if I should get a touch screen or not. Thanks</p>
<p>I don’t think you need anything special for engineering. You may need a discrete graphics card if you are going to be doing a lot of graphic modeling, but for everything else, any $500 machine will do the job.</p>
<p>Others here will tell you, CAD, especially 3d modeling is far more rewarding on a desktop. Any laptop, Mac or PC will work if you don’t expect it to do that type of heavy lifting.</p>
<p>IF, and this is a BIG IF, you decide you have to have the ability to do work normally reserved for desktops (NO school will expect this of you), be prepared to spend a bunch, have a heavy computer and poor battery life. If you go that route it is hard to beat @Xi.</p>
<p>Having a touchscreen is really a matter of personal preference, and not much more.</p>
<p>If you want a powerful laptop with great discrete graphics that isn’t a 10-pound behemoth, you may want to look at an MSI GS70 (17 inch screen) or GS60 (15 inch screen screen), but those will cost a big chunk of change.</p>
<p>Asus and HP also have decent ones, but the GTX 860M isn’t the most powerful chip in the world. Personally, I would go with the GTX 970M that the MSI’s offer.</p>
<p>You may also want to look at the Lenovo Y-Series for GPU’s, but I don’t think that the new generation’s offerings go above the 860M. However, I may be wrong about that.</p>
<p>If you want a powerful i7 but don’t need a great graphics card, there are a TON of options ranging from Lenovo Thinkpads to Dell XPS’s to Macbooks.</p>
<p>Otherwise, just about any $500-$600 laptop should offer a decent design with an i5 chip (I don’t recommend an i3). Except for HP’s. Try not to get an HP. Or a Razer Blade, which is overpriced.</p>
<p>We’re drifting a bit here since we are discussing computers that are well beyond what you need. With that said, if you are going big, you’ll want something that is Solidworks certified. That means a Quadro graphics card rather than the lesser gaming cards typically found in the non-enterprise machines. IF, and again that’s a BIG IF, you are going to spend the money, you want something that’ll run multiple monitors, hence Quadro. It really is overkill to go this way and it comes with the penalty of weight and poor battery life. If you do though, it’ll be a BA laptop (many here feel that’s an oxymoron). </p>