<p>I'm leaning towards getting a Mac but I have a few concerns. I'm thinking about Mechanical Engineering and I'm worried there might be compatibility issues with certain engineering software. I also have heard that engineers need to take at least an introductory computer programming course, and I've heard that most computer programming classes require PC's. If we have any Mech. Engineers or any engineers at all who could help me, I would much appreciate it.</p>
<p>Hi,
Although the engineering website says that either will be fine, it still recommends PCs since all engineering software work on PCs.</p>
<p>[Prospective</a> Students - Computer Requirements for Undergraduate and Graduate Students](<a href=“http://www.nd.edu/~engineer/prospects/compreq.htm]Prospective”>http://www.nd.edu/~engineer/prospects/compreq.htm)</p>
<p>i have a mac and for freshman year it was fine, but there are a number of limitations. i will have to get a pc for auto-cad and other programing (i am a civil engineering, but i am pretty sure mechanical engineering uses auto-cad which is only available on a pc). Overall, one of the only really benefits of a mac is the battery life (everything else if pretty even). I would go with a really nice PC to be honest. I will probably go out and get a cheap PC and use it only for civil engineering programming. i like the mac for presentations, etc. But programs like MATLAB which freshman engineers use can be used on macs and pcs, but in the future, i would say that a PC is better. Macs are more for artsy kinds of things (i.e. great for presentations, etc), whereas pcs are more for computing power and programing and things like this. I would seriously consider getting a pc.</p>
<p>Well on macs you can run bootcamp and partition your harddrive so some of it is for your windows programs and files and the other part is for mac programs and files. You can also us parallels, which allows you to run single windows programs within the mac os (I believe). I do know that there are ways to run windows programs on macs, though.</p>
<p>Also, I was just looking on wikipedia, and in March of 2011 a Mac version of autocad is going to be released. I don’t know if it’s 100% true, but I googled it and there was a lot of “evidence” about it. Hopefully it is true as that would save the hassle of using bootcamp and whatnot!</p>
<p>you will be fine with a mac, but obviously you would have a lot less hassle just going with a pc</p>
<p>^^i never understood the bootcamp idea - if you are buying a MAC but will run bootcamp, you are basically still buying a mac and buying a PC (you would have to buy windows 7 or whatever the pc version is) - gets very expensive </p>
<p>and regardless of a mac verison of autocad, there will be problems with it no doubt - hopefully it will work (i would love to see it) - but I can’t imagine it working out to perfection or even near perfection.</p>
<p>Hawk, as far as Autocad goes I believe you can access it remotely from an engineering department machine using Mac’s Terminal or X11 program. It has been a couple years since I left but I remember accessing Matlab and a few other programs using ND’s servers. They don’t really publicize it but I bet you could do it. It might be a good idea to e-mail some of your profs in the department to see if you can actually still do this. PM me if you have any questions about this.</p>