<p>Hi, I'm going to be entering college at Case for engineering (ME, maybe aerospace too) in the fall, and I'm starting to shop for computers. What's the minimum system reqiorements you would reccomend?<br>
Lol not that you WISH you had, the minimum you think is nessicary. I'll work from there. Thanks!</p>
<p>Go to the following and you will get to Case's recommended minimums and Case also has special deals through Dell and a site to go to from this page. Note, you will need to contact Case after you accept to get password to get to the Dell special deal site:</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>I was wondering if any students felt they needed more, especially the engineering students.</p>
<p>You won't need special system requirements for your computer nearly as much as you'll need software. Case or any decent engineering school will have many computer labs with all the necessary software. </p>
<p>However, if you want to be able to do everything at home you would probably need:<br>
MATLAB
Maple, Mathcad or Mathematica (depending on what is preferred at your school)
ProE
autoCAD
a C compiler (like Borland)
maybe ChemCAD?, probably not since you said ME.
a stats package like SPSS or miniTAB
and of course, Excel, Powerpoint, and Word.</p>
<p>I think that's all I used, except some lab specific software to run the equipment and Adobe Acrobat and Distiller. Also, you should consider getting a memory stick or plan on emailing yourself projects and papers all the time or putting stuff on CDs. If you are thinking of getting a laptop, get an internal wireless card, too. It's so cool to sit outside surfing the internet!</p>
<p>If you follow the recommendations on the site, you will be fine for engineering except I would recommend getting the gigabyte of memory (RAM) rather than just the 512 and the 64 video card rather than just the 32 -- those higher levels are not necessary for engineering just better to have. Note, I actually think a couple of the recs can be ignored. First, it recommends for PC's that it have a floppy drive (and then recommends against it for Mac's). The floppy drive is useless since virtually no one uses floppy disks for anything anymore and thus if you have to pay extra for it you can skip it -- Macintosh doesn't even sell one as an option anymore for a number of its computers because they are useless. The site also recommends getting a wireless A/B/G card. Most computers today are sold with B and G and some still go with just B. The site even notes that the unversity conforms with only B and G but recommends A in case you go somewhere that has A. That is ridiculous since virtually no one has A and it is not worth paying any extra cost just to change the standard wireless card provided in the computer. In fact, it can be difficult to even get an A compatible card as a choice when you buy a computer.</p>
<p>Also as to additional software mentioned above, don't buy any of it until you know what you need and are at college -- college computer stores most often have the same software that you can buy retail for a huge discount; example, buy Mathematica retail and it is $1500 or more; buy the student version through a college bookstore and it is about $100 (and the student version is the same as the regular except everything is labeled as student version)</p>
<p>i recommend as a minimum:</p>
<p>-1.5ghz pentium or athlon processor - you don't need athlon 64
-512mb RAM - get the fastest type possible (DDR2/DDR3/Dual Channel etc)
-go for an internal wi-fi G card (802.11g) - not A. G is better than and backward compatible with B.
-make sure you have a few USB 2 ports and a Firewire port - these make it really easy to add fast external components to your system later
-you don't need a floppy drive but make sure you get at least a DVD-ROM drive
-if you're getting a laptop, consider a second battery
-make sure you have a LAN/ethernet port (100mb but preferably one that can do 1000mb/1gb for the future)
-64mb graphics card (128 preferable)
-don't buy special software though win xp pro is usually a standard requirement/suggestion for many colleges
- consider using Open Office (<a href="http://www.openoffice.org%5B/url%5D">www.openoffice.org</a>) instead of Microsoft Office products - it's free and fully compatible</p>
<p>think about what you'll be doing with your computer...</p>
<p>if you're into video editing, gaming, or higher-level photoshop work, you'll want a faster processor, a high end graphics card (min 128mb) and more RAM,.</p>
<p>for video editing, firewire is a must and you probably want a DVD (+/-) (R/RW) drive to make DVDs</p>
<p>Anyone recommend Apples for engineering?</p>