Laptops

<p>Simplenation, doesn't it mean you have LESS ram to work with that you could use for movies and games or whatever?</p>

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Simplenation, doesn't it mean you have LESS ram to work with that you could use for movies and games or whatever?

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<p>in theory, yeah...but in practice, it only matters if you're running things simultaneously. As long as you're not constantly switching back and forth between windows and those movies/games/etc, you don't need quite as much ram as you might think.</p>

<p>But yes, you should expect that running windows at the same time as mac os x will use a lot more ram.</p>

<p>I have had my Dell laptop for 2 years and have not had a single problem with it. I don't really know what is required of computer engineering majors, but many laptops only come with the bare minimum as far as memory and programming go, so you might have to add those things, which might raise the cost a little. I like my laptop for its portability. Even though I live in the dorm, I go home and to off-campus friends' houses quite often and it's great to just grab my laptop and go. It's also nice if you plan to do work outside of your dorm room (i.e. library, student lounge, etc.)</p>

<p>Walk into any real programming lab and you're bound to see (other than the regular campus machines):</p>

<p>-a TON of thinkpads
-macbooks
-one or two half-broken dells</p>