<p>I'm getting ready to buy a laptop for freshman year and was wondering do most students take notes on their laptops in class? If so, what do most CMU students prefer? Macs or PCs?</p>
<p>It’s pretty evenly split. Just get a laptop that suits your needs - most students just brought their pre-existing laptops from home or bought something new that they liked. You’ll find people who are rabid PC fans and people who are rabid Apple lovers on both ends of the spectrum!</p>
<p>On a related note, for engineering students specifically, are PCs more popular? I’ve heard sometimes you might need/want to use programs that only work on PCs.
I love my mac, but if a PC would really be better for engineering, I’ll probably go with that if I end up at CMU (I need a new computer either way, so it’s not a huge issue)</p>
<p>Honestly any program you’re going to need will have a way to make it work for macs. Many students use macs on campus, so professors are accommodating of that. My roommate and RA are both in engineering and neither have ever had a problem using a mac as CIT students :)</p>
<p>My S is ECE major and has never had a problem using his Mac. Also remember the new Mac’s can run Windows if you want to.</p>
<p>Its a split between thinkpads and Macs. Dont get anything else because its not going to last. If you have math classes, be concerned about things only working in windows. I have linux and ive had a few issues.</p>
<p>In my classes, I haven’t seen too many people use laptops to take notes. But some do and some use tablet pcs. But there are definitely professors who don’t allow laptops in class…facebook’s pretty hard to resist. lol</p>
<p>Ive seen people take notes. Honestly, they “say” they are taking notes, but they are on facebook(these guys often sit at the back of the room so the teacher “doesnt notice” (they do)). Some teachers have TAs watching for who does this, which take off points or kick you out of class(especially in programming). Dont bring a computer to class, it is a significant contributor to lower grades(unless you are required to). Most of all.,do NOT bring a computer to programming class. Bring a piece of paper and a pencil. Youll thank me in the long run.</p>
<p>I take legit notes on my computer! Maybe computer science is different, but in humanities courses, the professors don’t stop to nicely write things out for you-- they just blather for an hour and you have to scramble to keep up.</p>