<p>A MAC is a waste of money for a college student. If you were on computer/graphics design degree I’ll go for a MAC but for engineering PC is the way to go either with Linux or Windows.</p>
<p>From my experience, having a lap top is much easier than constantly relying on the computer labs, especially as a commuter and not someone who lived on campus. I had a 17 in Vaio that i bought in 2006 and it lasted until 2011. The hardware ended up going on it, where the charger plugs in, we fixed that problem in 2010, but it ultimately killed it in the end. It was way too big though, a nice small one would have been much better. A lot of chemE’s had macs, but they couldn’t run vizio on it and probably more programs, i’m not sure. I didn’t start to heavily use my computer until senior year though. Senior year i took it to class everyday because we were relegated to using the chemE lab computers, which were old and not reliable. My first years in engineering we used the engineering computer labs mostly, and i would bring my laptop for hw gatherings. I would suggest a vaio because my boss at work now swears by them. Mine was running maple (which apparently is not used anymore :-() until it’s last day, which is a heavy program to use. I’ve never used mac, but i would recommend not getting one at this time in your life just because of compatibility issues with school networks and programs and sending files back and forth with fellow engineers.</p>