<p>So I just checked the comp req page for Engineering, and at first glance all the specs look about the same as last year, until you look at the processor requirements.</p>
<p>These CPU model numbers are the newest and top of the line (Sandy Bridge), and not a lot of laptops have been released with them yet. When they do, in May/June, I expect the price to be very high.</p>
<p>Any thoughts on this? Would VT really care if I had a similar cpu speed with an i7 1st gen?</p>
<p>Guess I'll wait till the new laptops come out. By the way, I'm not buying a tablet, going to be using the Wacom Bamboo.</p>
<p>Any reasonably competent computer will satisfy their requirements, you don’t need a computer with a blazing-edge processor. You’re probably not going to be doing anything so computationally or graphically intensive that you’d need a Sandy Bridge chip. You might run into a problem if you’re using a netbook or something, but a normal laptop will be able to handle anything thrown at it by the engineering department.</p>
<p>bahahaha…there’s absolutely no reason you’ll need a SB laptop. Get some average cheap laptop with a big screen and a USB tablet. Build yourself a desktop computer and get a dual monitor setup. Use dropbox+onenote’s cloud feature to sync all your stuff and laugh your butt off at classmates who bought the tablet and type all day with the chiclet keyboard and mouse with the trackpad.</p>
<p>I mean, your freshman year I can’t see you running anything that is going to come close to requiring that. What’s the most intensive thing you use freshman year, ALICE? Do they even still use that POS?</p>
<p>Also, do what hokagesama said. That’s what I did (well, after wasting 2.2k on a tablet that I ended up filling full of lead) and it worked out just fine. My laptop was even a netbook, although I don’t recommend that because I couldn’t run some programs in class which was kind of a disadvantage.</p>
<p>Matlab is pretty useful to learn. Pretty much anything with 2 gigs of ram (which is pretty much anything you can buy now) will run it. LABview (which I don’t recall ever having to use) is less intensive. A netbook could run either except the screen resolution would be too small. Make sure you get something that displays at least 1024 x 768 pixels.</p>
<p>Minitab is great too. If you’ve got a chance to make sure you learn how to use it.</p>
<p>I’m currently in ENGE 1114 which is the second semester Engineering Education course required for most engineers (there is another second semester ENGE course for Electrical and Computer Engineers). All engineering students used LabView first semester in ENGE 1024. The first half of second semester (ENGE 1114) we used Matlab. Then, the second half of this semester we were required to download Autodesk Inventor. Now, I don’t know anything about computer specs, but I have a feeling this took up a lot of space on my computer and I have noticed it has slowed down just a little bit since I downloaded this program (it took HOURS to download). Also if this has anything to do with it, I received this email a week ago telling me I need to update my driver:</p>
<p>"Message:</p>
<p>Most Fujitsu tablets as well as other brand laptops and tablets have Intel wireless cards that need to be upgraded to the latest driver. This upgrade will solve many of the dropped connections users are experiencing. The Fujitsu website does not have the latest drivers. SWAT has created a web page that will help users upgrade their drivers"</p>
<p>This is actually a good point that I think people should keep in mind. If you’re getting a laptop, you may want to invest an extra $50 into a portable external HDD. That way when you install all the crap that your EngE classes use, you don’t have to worry about running out of space or uninstalling more important things–like computer games :).</p>
<p>Oh yeah, Inventor is pretty intensive. Even it doesn’t need anything more than 2 gigs and a 2ghz P4 processor, although it’d be slow with that set up.</p>
<p>Yeah inventor is definitely the most intensive program we use. Online says the minimum specs are really low but I got an i3 processor/4GB ram and inventor can put my computer through some hurdles. The other day I had a bunch of crap open. Itunes (resource whore btw), 2 PDF files, a word document, 2 browsers, and inventor. Inventor crashed shortly. Now if I have nothing but inventor then it can run decently but it still takes a while to boot up.</p>
<p>So I would definitely reccomend a quad core. I think that might be my problem… if its really a problem. I mean its not that big of a deal to close some programs down to do homework for an hour.</p>
<p>So I finally decided to get a laptop for college and here are the specs:
(I really didn’t care about VT’s processor requirements, because honestly, who’s going to check each computer’s specifications?)</p>
<p>HP Pavilion dm4t customizable Notebook PC
• Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• Intel(R) Core™ i5-560M Dual Core Processor (2.66 GHz, 3MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz
• 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 6370 DDR3 switchable graphics [HDMI, VGA]
• 6GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
• 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (standard) - Up to 6.25 hours of battery life
• 14.0" diagonal High-Definition HP BrightView LED Display (1366 x 768)
• SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
• HP TrueVision Webcam and Fingerprint Reader
• 802.11b/g/n WLAN and Bluetooth(R)
• Standard Keyboard</p>
<p>Total with student discount, tax and a printer came to be $876.94</p>
<p>I think that’s a good price and will fit my requirements pretty well. Even Inventor should work haha!</p>