<p>I’m trying to decide which one I want to get. They will be about as thin as the air so weight is not a problem. I want to know if the larger screen size and greater power is worth the loss in portability and whether people think this will change with the thin Macbook Pros.</p>
<p>I’m going to major in materials engineering and I don’t know what sort of stuff I’d need a laptop for exactly. Will I be using LaTex or R. What are laptops mostly used for as an engineer.</p>
<p>Well, you won’t necessarily need a laptop for materials engineering, it’s not like you’ll need to take it around with you or anything. </p>
<p>Program wise it will need to run CES (a materials database, does NOT work on Macs), Solidworks and Minitab.</p>
<p>I feel like macs are super popular with liberal arts majors, but less popular with other majors, especially including engineering. If you’re going to open house, it might be a good idea to ask the department.</p>
<p>My roommate last year was a mechanical engineer at Cal Poly. I asked him basically the same question. He told me that for, ME at least, you really do not use your personal computer for programs as it is all done on Cal Poly’s own computers. So really all you should need to worry about is your personal preferences like if you are a gamer, or like to do a lot of graphic arts.
To be sure though I would also ask the Materials department head and see what his recommendations are. Sometimes departments will E-mail you a list of materials you will need including what type of computer specifications you will need. My girlfriend is an architecture major at Cal Poly at when she was accepted the department mailed her a list of all the materials she would need.</p>
<p>Now that there are new macbook pros I know I want to get one with a 15" screen with retina display, but I have some more questions.</p>
<p>Will I benefit from upgrading ram from 8gb to 16gb or upgrading CPU from 2.6GHz to 2.7GHz?</p>
<p>Will either of these matter with engineering software that I’ll use?</p>
<p>Which software could one use one one’s own computer rather than in the computer labs as an engineer at Cal Poly? Does anyone do it and why? Is it more convenient ever?</p>
<p>In materials engineering, when/what year does one start using computer-intensive software?</p>
<p>If I want to run parallels instead of boot camp, will more RAM help the computer not slow down?</p>
<p>So you won the lottery and can afford that computer. Lucky guy.</p>
<p>I think the 2.3GHz version may be adequate and less expensive. Does anyone think there will be much difference between 2.3 and 2.6 clock speed? Also, I didn’t win the lottery, I just live in the silicon valley…</p>