<p>I'll be going to 2nd year electrical engineering next month and I'm looking for a new laptop. The laptop I used last year was fast and adequate for engineering but it was really big and heavy, almost 6.2lbs! But it was also my desktop replacement. It was really tiring bring it to school.</p>
<p>I'm looking to buy a new laptop that I can bring to lectures. I'll still be keeping my old laptop to use at home. I need something a smaller, lighter and newer. Right now, I'm stuck between the 13inch Macbook Pro or the new 14inch HP Envy. Both are around the same price but I get a iphone touch with the Macbook for free. I'm leaning towards the Macbook because honestly, it does have the "cool" factor. But I'm not sure if it can handle my engineering needs. I sometimes have to use Matlab and Visual Studio. Can it run on a Macbook? Or would a high performance PC like the HP Envy be better?</p>
<p>Im not sure about the visual studio, but matlab works fine on a mbp. I would go with the mbp for sure.
another thing is that you always have the option of running both mac and windows on your mbp. So again, buy a mbp.
13inch mbp is just something made to be carried from class to class, without sacrificing any performance…</p>
<p>Have you consider Lenvo X series / T series? They are light too!</p>
<p>You probably need bootcamp or vm to do VS, I don’t use Macbook and I hate Macbook myself. I am sorry, Steve Jobs. (actually I used it at the Hackaton NYC event and Mac got me into troubles.)</p>
<p>Anyway. Cool factor doesn’t make you fly. If you never use Mac before, and you have been a Windows user for many years, do yourself a favor, stick with Windows.</p>
<p>Of course you can do bootcamp on Mac. I am just saying which ever you like… go for it.</p>
<p>PS: There is no such thing called “laptops for engineers”. In the end 2.0 - 2.6Ghz is good enough, 2 GB - 4GB rams are good. If you don’t want to spend too much money on ram from the site, buy them from newegg. Sometime’s a lot cheaper.</p>
<p>Harddisk with 5400RPM is too slow… so look out those specs.</p>
<p>I don’t see why you have to take it to lectures. I never took my laptop to campus because I had access to computer labs. </p>
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<p>I second the Lenovo X series. I switched from a MacBook to an X200 because of weight difference and heating issues. I also ended up running Windows most of the time on the MacBook because I ran ADS and PSpice.</p>
<p>Some people think Lenovo is bad because it’s a Chinese brand. But X and T series are manaufactured with the IBM folks in Japan. The quality is still very good.
The X201 is very light, is 13" if I am not mistaken. If you want larger screen, and a bit heavier, T series is the option. </p>
<p>I always feel that old folks like Lenovo blackies, and younger one likes Apple brand. I bet almost every software engineers in the past would get IBM X and T series over Apple Mac.</p>
<p>I don’t carry a laptop either, unless I really need it. In fact, I don’t have a laptop :)</p>