<p>I have posted in previous forums about which laptop i should select. I am a senior in high school that plans to eventually go to UMD - College Park, after 2 years at a MD community college since i got a full ride to the CC. I intend to study either bioengineering or chemical engineering. I hope for it to get me through my undergrad studies and hopefully my graduate schooling as well, so I want it to last(4-8 years). As a high school graduation present my aunt has tentatively decided to get me the following laptop (and specs) and I'd like to know if it is a sufficient, good, or great laptop and what is good or if something needs to be better about it for either of those two majors. Please be specific as I know little about computer specs!!</p>
<p>15" MacBook Pro with Retina Display:
2.3GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage</p>
<p>I know in the past Macs weren't good for engineering majors as they couldn't run many programs necessary, however I've seen that now they run most and those that they don't you can bootcamp Windows or just use the schools computer labs. </p>
<p>Unless you want to do gaming or CAD on the machine, that should be well beyond sufficient, and I’d argue that neither of those two things have any business being on a laptop anyway.</p>
<p>That MBP is severely overpriced, for that money you can make an incredibly strong desktop and run all your programs through remote access to your computer from a school computer . Meaning you are at school, your computer is at home is on and from school you do all your computing on YOUR computer. Then there is no BS of having to moving information to a cloud, flash drive or, external drive and move it to your computer. Seriously for $2600 you could build a very desktop that will blow that laptop out of the water and have more than 1 monitor, and even more if you do not intend on gaming and don’t have to spend money a high priced GPU.</p>
<p>My son had a Lenovo that held up very well all through college. They are having a big sale but it ends tonight. You could look on Amazon as well or check with the University of Maryland bookstore. I think you’ll want to get something that follows Maryland’s recommendations since that is where you will end up.</p>
<p>At Cal Poly, owning a computer is optional, but if you do, they recommend something that will run Solidworks with at least 16g of ram and quad core. Not being an engineer and having no experience with CAD, I’m not sure if he’d be better off just doing Solidworks in labs or if it would be beneficial/nice to have the option to do on a laptop. His current computer, a 2011era Lenovo with i5 duo will suffice for all but the heavy crunching. Thoughts? Thanks!</p>
<p>I was about to pull the trigger on a W540, but they only get 2.5/5.0 stars on Lenovo’s own site. He was very happy with his previous ideapad. Now I’m conflicted.</p>
<p>As was previously mentioned, Apple laptops (and Apple products in general) are massively overpriced relative to the utility of the hardware. You could easily just buy a desktop for 4/5 or less of the proposed laptop and spend the remainder on shipping it to and from your permanent residence for summer break. I would recommend building it yourself, as it will be cheaper than buying a prebuilt system and more fun. Fast example (there are certainly other possibilities that are cheaper or more expensive):</p>
<p>Prices pulled from Newegg, but I expect prices at Amazon to be equal or cheaper. This is significantly better than the Apple laptop (in terms of compute capacity) and significantly cheaper. </p>
<p>Fun fact: if you do graduate studies in chemical engineering, you may do some fairly computationally intensive problems (e.g., molecular dynamics simulations). You will usually run this on a school/research group cluster, but if not, you may appreciate the faster personal machine.</p>
<p>I think there’s NO doubt that desk tops are superior in most respects, but they have limitations.</p>
<p>Cal Poly has five 24h labs, but they do classes in them sometimes. That’s where the bulk of his CAD stuff will get done. He doesn’t do work in his room, so the desktop is out. The laptop is for convenience and will only be put into action with Solidworks on limited occasions, not as a full time CAD machine.</p>
<p>They strongly recommend laptops with quadcore and a minimum of 8G RAM, ideally 16G. Since Solid works requires a pretty good graphics card, that throws a buyer into either a mobile workstation or a gaming machine. That’s far different than the average Word?Excel/Surfing book.</p>
<p>Now, which one, without spending 4k on something like a Boxx?</p>
<p>As far as I know, Solid Works does not currently provide significant GPU acceleration. As such, if the purpose is CAD/Solid Works, the a laptop with a better CPU and acceptable GPU is the most efficient solution. Unfortunately, you will find that laptops typically bundle the best CPUs and GPUs together. If he really wants to go all in on the problem, he could just buy an AMD server (Opteron 16 core?)+MB and a cheap laptop, then run all the calculations on the server. The cost would probably be about the same as the current macbook. Regardless, I think a Windows laptop will probably serve his stated purpose best.</p>
<p>I bogarted the OP’s thread so as not to create another “which computer” thread. Although I’m a Mac user and tend to love most Apple products, a Mac was never in the mix for my son.</p>
<p>I think nearly all the heavy CAD lifting will be done in the labs at “real” workstations. He will have remote access too, but I don’t know to what capacity.</p>
<p>It seems like most of the Cal Poly students opt for some sort of Solidworks capable laptop even though they don’t use them for that purpose much, I’d guess due to inefficiencies. The personal server is an interesting thought. If for no other reason, that it’s bad a**. </p>
<p>I realize that MacBooks are
Overpriced but as I am getting it for no cost to me it is not an issue. Also I know that some programs work better on a PC. My original question was if the specs I mentioned would be good or sufficient. Since there will be labs and I can boot camp if necessary, will those specs be good for a chemical engineering major?</p>
<p>“I realize that MacBooks are overpriced but as I am getting it for no cost to me it is not an issue.” Does your aunt know you can get what you need for school at a much cheaper price than this one you want or was this particular computer that you want her idea? My sons’ very generous aunt also bought them their laptops they needed for engineering as a high school graduation gift but they were cost conscious in what they asked her for.</p>
<p>So, he needs this expensive highly rated laptop he wants or not? There are laptops rated highly that are much cheaper. It reminds me of college or car rankings. I have to have this because it’s ranked number one. Is this essential to what he needs to start college with? I am not an engineer so maybe I’m missing something.</p>
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