<p>I am a senior mechanical and aerospace engineering major. I've had a Thinkpad W520 for years, and have been pretty happy with it for the most part. However, it has started to get sluggish (spilling a beer on it didn't help lol) and I was thinking about looking into a new laptop. Not immediately, because I'm going to get as much life out of this laptop as I can.</p>
<p>Here is a refurbished retina MacBook Pro I was looking at. <a href="http://store.apple.com/us/product/FE865LL/A/refurbished-133-inch-macbook-pro-24ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i5">http://store.apple.com/us/product/FE865LL/A/refurbished-133-inch-macbook-pro-24ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i5</a></p>
<p>It seems like a good deal, has pretty much everything I'm looking for. My current laptop is clunky and heavy, and I'm tired of lugging it around, so I like the 13 inch size and the sleek design of this rMBP. I LOVE the 256 GB SSD, 8 GB memory, display, ports, and the overall feel.</p>
<p>However, I have a few concerns. Right now, most of my heavy-duty engineering work is done in the computer labs at my university, such as SolidWorks and other CAD programs. I do some on my laptop, mainly just a little MATLAB occasionally. However, I'm hesitant to get a computer that can't use a lot of the programs I might need. How much of a problem would this be with the above rMBP? The only other concern is just getting used to the OS, but I don't see that being too much of a problem. </p>
<p>I've tried to find a Windows laptop with similar specs to the above rMBP, but haven't had much luck yet. Any recommendations? What I would be looking for in a PC would be portability (size, weight), good memory (although I could upgrade this myself), solid state drive, and long battery life. Superficial things, such as look and backlit keyboard, aren't super important but would be nice.</p>
<p>Also, I kicked around looking at a Macbook Air, but was concerned about how much it could handle, not very familiar with it.</p>
<p>Thoughts?</p>