<p>From my experience, a windows PC handles the engineering software better than Macs and my daughter has always used windows, so I am looking at a windows PC for her to take to WPI. However, she and I are trying to figure out laptop verses desktop. If it were to be a desktop, she would probably also have a netbook. </p>
<p>Opinions / Reccomendations anyone.</p>
<p>The only situation in which the added performance of a desktop would make it considerably more useful than a desktop is for high performance games played on high quality settings. For all engineering software as well as general games and productivity software, a laptop should more than suffice. Today’s budget laptops are very fast and are probably equivalent in power to a high-powered desktp 2 years ago. Buying a desktop and a laptop would be redundant and expensive.</p>
<p>However, I would say the portability of laptop is very useful in college, especially if she wishes to study or work in the library or other places. Many assignments at WPI are distributed online and, while there are campus computers available to students, a laptop is a very worthwhile investment. A good laptop for college (even for engineering students) need not be high powered and expensive; cheaper laptops for $400/500 (not netbooks) are usually more than good enough.</p>
<p>Go with a desktop and then maybe a second lightweight laptop for flowing notes. Moving around a laptop strikes me as overly tedious.</p>
<p>If you or daughter are driving and can transport a desk top, a desk top is cheaper and less likely to be stolen. A netbook is easy, but I know few students who actually use them for notetaking etc. Yours may be different.
Son bought a big laptop which he locks to his desk. But he has to fly, so a laptop was the only way he could go.</p>
<p>Still torn between the two. We live in LA, so she would be flying back and forth. However we have family in MA, so desktop logistics could be worked out. I have a laptop and a netbook and prefer the netbook for flying. Laptop just too much stuff unless you have a small footprint laptop (which I had years ago). But a small footprint laptop isn’t much more screen space than a netbook. My netbook cost about $300.</p>
<p>Will be my daughter’s decision, but I’m leaning toward the desktop with a netbook for those trips to the library (so much easyier to carry around). My son had a laptop and had some problems with it. Was a real bear to take apart to fix. I have assembled my own desktop machines from components and taught my son how to do it. Now he’s the expert. He now has a desktop that he built and he put a TV tuner card in it and uses it to record TV shows, so he doesn’t have a separate TV in his room at school. He also runs a dual monitor system. He is also a mechanical engineering student so can have a CAD session on one screen and a Word document with his report on the other. However, my daughter is not such a computer nerd and wouldn’t use the computer in the same way, I don’t think.</p>
<p>Definitely get a laptop. Desktops are available everywhere in campus if you need to use heavy-processing software. A laptop is extremely useful for group work and overall convenience. Get a light one if you’re worried about carrying all that weight. Keep in mind that you don’t need to carry it everywhere/everyday either.</p>