<p>hey I'm newly accepted to College of Engineering Class of 2018, and I have a question for laptops. By the way, I am Mechanical Engineering major. </p>
<p>Right now, I have a 13-inch macbook air, and I have been really enjoying using it since 2011 winter. As I am going to college, I would like to get a new laptop.</p>
<p>I really enjoyed using Mac OS so I would like to get 13 inch Macbook Pro with Retina Display this time. However, I heard many times that Engineering students need PC as many softwares are only available in PCs. When I visited Cornell, I also heard from Engineering major senior saying that Mac OS is just fine and all the programs are also available in Mac. </p>
<p>What is true?? I would really need your honest response...</p>
<p>I’m a 3rd year CS major.
In general, Macs are fine for most projects, but I wouldn’t recommend it.</p>
<p>Like many other CS majors, I believe Macs to be highly overpriced for the performance they provide and also find the operating system to be absolutely horrid.</p>
<p>If you really want a Mac, get it, and there’s plenty of PC’s in computer labs on campus anyway.
Just remember that a few CS majors nod in shame everytime they see a Mac xD</p>
<p>Fun fact: Even the Hotel School professor says, throw out your Macs because they’re useless.</p>
<p>MechE uses a lot of Matlab (extensive) and Solidworks (1or2 semesters, and all project teams and a lot of research use this if you get involved). Both software are available in the computer labs. </p>
<p>Neither of them are readily available for personal laptop use. If you can get your hands on cracked copies of them, they were built for PCs. My friends with Macs ended up partitioning/running the Mac versions of the software which made for some minor inconvenient incompatibilities. Everything worked out fine, just need some one time leg work to set everything up.</p>
<p>Most CS professors have Macs, so this isn’t useful advice.</p>
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<p>Don’t know about Solidworks, but MATLAB is definitely readily available for personal use. You do have to pay for it, but you have to pay for the PC version too. Also, it’s very easy to get a windows partition if you really need one.</p>
<p>@zenzic
Apple gives Cornell a heavy discount (as with many other colleges) on their computers.
I asked a few of my professors why they were using Macs, and they said they got them for free from the department.
However, one professor specifically said CS majors should never use Macs because it’s such a basic OS and has severe limitations.</p>
<p>Seriously, if you don’t anything about the matter, don’t bother commenting.
It just shows how much you know about your own major.</p>
<p>^ I think you just have a personal feud with macs, most of my CS friends and my CS professors use Macs and they don’t complain about it. In the worse case scenario, you can always use bootcamp/partition for windows. And as far as the first two years of most engineering courses are concerned, you don’t need any power or windows computers, heck you can probably do with a 1.5GHz clock frequency. And if you still want power, you can always go to a computer lab.</p>
<p>Why do people even use macs, it’s not cool to be hipster.</p>
<p>EDIT: All i’m going to say is that one time I was hanging out with some people and we wanted to watch a movie on the big TV screen. Except we needed some kind of cable that would only connect to PCs. I was the only one who had a PC.</p>
<p>What does your college recommend? Have you asked if they have a preference or even just a suggestion? If you can find out what programs they use, you may be able to decide which will be more useful.</p>
<p>What limitations? You really think Windows doesn’t have limitations for CS majors? If so, have you even taken 3110 yet? I’ve already completed the major requirements and I have not run into any “limitations” with my Mac, but several people had to deal with a lot of hassle using Windows for 3110 and projects for some other classes.</p>
<p>And there are plenty of professors with different opinions on the matter. You think you’re the only one who’s ever discussed this with a professor? I asked another CS professor why he used a Mac and he mentioned several reasons why he preferred them, none of which involved monetary incentives. You can find several knowledgeable people on both sides, as well as many (like me) who don’t care, I’m sure. This is not as black and white an issue as you pretend it is. Sure, Macs are overpriced, but not everyone cares that much about that. Some people have different priorities than you. Plus, it’s mind-numbingly easy to set up Windows (which you get for free as a Cornell student), and Linux if you’re into that, so you get the best of both worlds.</p>
<p>By the way, computer science is not about comparing operating systems and computer models.</p>
<p>For the record, all I responded to your post was “Most CS professors have Macs, so this isn’t useful advice.”</p>
<p>This is perfectly true. I did not say Macs were better than Windows, or even that they were not worse (although I do agree with the latter statement). I just mentioned that your random anecdote was meaningless. It’s called the ‘argument from authority’ fallacy. You might want to look that up. If someone says Macs are ‘useless’ [which, last I checked, isn’t true, since I am using one right now] doesn’t mean they’re right just because they’re a professor (of something completely unrelated, at that).</p>