Laptops for UCLA engineers

Hi Im an incoming MechE major looking to get a laptop for college and want to know what a good one to get is. I was considering a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. Is this a good choice?

I would recommend a full size laptop, not a surface or some tablet. Although tablets are getting better, I wouldn’t say they’re a great replacement for when you want to run multiple intensive programs. They’re good for notes an perhaps opening one intensive program. Tablets are perfectly fine if youre major won’t require intensive program, but mechanical engineering might require you to.

Anyways, my rule of thumb with laptops is: Easier to buy more upfront, since you can’t upgrade them easily like a desktop computer.

Check UCLA’s College of Engineering’s laptop requirements. My DD is an ME at another college and she got a Lenovo that has served her well (she is a rising senior). She gave Lenovo her college’s laptop requirements and they built it for her and as the previous poster said, she bought more memory and “power” (I am very non-techy and I can’t think of the right word). The Lenovo tech was good at working with her and building the right laptop at a price my Dd could afford. With ME she does a lot of CAD, Mathlab, programming and other design work so your laptop has to be able to do all of that kind of work. She was very lucky when during an interview she got a macbook as a “thank you” and uses the macbook for class notes, but her actual engineering work is on the Lenovo.

Look around the Lenovo website. They have a college education program which gave her extra discounts and brought the price down to around $1500 which isn’t bad since she has now had the laptop for 4 years. She recommend also getting the service contract where Lenovo comes out to the student. I think two times she has had to use it where Lenovo replaced something on her laptop at not charge and it came out cheaper in the long run. Plus it also bought her piece of mind since her laptop is cruicial to her coursework.

The bottom line is that almost any laptop will work just fine. The most important thing is making sure it is something that helps you work more comfortably. If that’s a Mac, then a Mac will work. If that’s a big clunker of a workstation laptop, then get that. If that’s a small, powerful ultrabook, then wonderful, buy it. You could probably also make a Chromebook work if you wanted to go small and ultra-portable.

Just keep in mind that non-windows machines will run into occasional software compatibility issues with common engineering software. Bigger machines will have more horsepower but will be less portable, so that may help or hamper your work on the machine. Personally, I go the route of ultrabooks: thin, lightweight, and portable, but with enough horsepower to handle pretty much any task I want that just can’t wait until I get back home or to my office where I can do it on a desktop.

My son bought a a big clunker of a workstation. In fact, it is such a beast, current commercially available laptops still can’t outperform it. It weighs about 9 pounds and has battery life that’s probably better measured in minutes than hours. He can do anything he needs to on it, including pretty complex 3D rendering. Here’s the thing though, every powerful thing he can do on it can be done with more ease on a desktop. The only real clients for a machine like that are the military and engineers working remotely so temporarily that having a desk top isn’t practical. In retrospect, he said he would have picked something lighter with good battery life. Students and parents WAY over think this. We sure did. Do as @boneh3ad said and get something that moves you. My only caveat, you don’t need to spend too much. You can get an i5, 8g, with a 1T HDD for $500 that will do everything you need and then some. Spending more can certainly lighten it up. That’s about it though.

I’ve been shopping laptops lately for my wife and you can certainly get some really decent machines in the $500 to $700 range that can handle most light duty engineering applications. With most machines beyond that price range you are paying for more power and/or thinner and lighter form factor. Once you get to the $2000 range you are looking at either heavy and enough horses to do pretty much anything or else really light and the ability to handle medium and some heavy duty work.

It’s really just a matter of how you like to work. I’d agree you never need the full “mobile workstation” type machines except in a few extreme cases to me it’s all about portability and battery life and the real dilemma should be the trade off between horsepower and price.

UCLA supports both Macs and PCs. It’s split around 50/50 I prefer a Mac. For your courses you don’t need anything too powerful and if you do there are Remote Desktop and workstation computer labs for you to use as options. Lighter is better. You won’t want a 20lb laptop in your backpack running from the hill to some hall in south campus.