<p>Right now I'm using a Inspiron 15R, and I enjoy using it. It's a bit clunky, and is a tad bit hard to carry to and from school, but it meets my needs. Recently, I was given the chance to get a Macbook (as a graduation gift from the entire family), and honestly I don't know much about them, but the mac seems like a fun computer to use.</p>
<p>With my current PC, it seems my options are keeping it, getting a better PC, or keeping it and getting a Mac (it seems redundant to keep both it and a newer PC). </p>
<p>Anyways, I'm wondering how much use I can get out of the PC for a Biomedical, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering major (I'm still split on which), and whether I could use the PC for most school related needs like office (word, powerpoint, etc.) and general school related activities while using a mac for leisure activities like youtube, movies, light basic gaming etc? </p>
<p>Right now, I'm pretty much wondering if I could just use the laptop I have right now for everything school related for a good four years (it would never leave my dorm) and use a MB air for everything else, or if I should look into getting a better laptop for school instead of going the both PC and Mac route? </p>
<p>On that topic, if my PC is good enough for four years of an engineering major, and I would just use a MB for it's portability and taking notes, would it be better to get a pro or air?</p>
<p>Thanks for reading guys, and any help is really appreciated!</p>
<p>How old is your computer? Here’s the thing: you don’t need a new high-end computer if all you want to do is word processing, make powerpoints, and do research on the internet. You can find a used 5-year old clunker for $50 and do just fine. I suspect that is not what you actually want though. If you want a computer that can do everything, and will hold up for four years, then you’ll want to get something new and current.</p>
<p>Two computers are going to be a lot more hassle than one, because invariably you will need to transfer files, remember what is where, etc. I would recommend getting a new computer with all the functionality you need, and using that for everything.</p>
<p>Finally, between a macbook pro and an air, get the macbook pro. The gimmick of the air (light weight) is not worth the extra price and loss of performance. 5.6 pounds for a 15" macbook pro is not that heavy.</p>
<p>I switched from Pro to Air and love lugging only half the weight (less than three pounds) and the increased performance where it counts most, booting and lauching apps and working with docs, due to the zero-seek-time SSD disk drive. Amortize the extra cost over four years; how much per day is it?</p>
<p>For general use, the Air would be your best option because it’s light and small. If you want more power, then the Pro would be the better option. But since you have the PC, then I’d pick the air over the Pro.</p>
<p>It may depend on the type of engineering you go into. For example MEs at our school need to be able to install a student version of SolidWorks, which is a huge RAM and disk storage hog. Meanwhile, EEs only need to install programming language compilers and some circuit analyzers/simulators; none of which are very demanding of computer memory or storage.</p>
<p>Given that you have a functional computer, I’d suggest keeping it and figuring out the best choice once you are there. At many Engineering schools, they can be rather particular about what you should have. I’m sure there must be something on the Web site for your school about this.</p>
<p>Lastly, you do know that you can run Windows on a Mac, right? Again, that might not be good enough to run high-end design software like SolidWorks.</p>
<p>Even the baseline Air will probably be able to run any programs you will need and you can use Parallels 8 (or Bootcamp which comes free) to boot windows if needed.</p>
<p>^ With Bootcamp or Parallels, you run Windows only when you absolutely have to (when is that?), and you get the benefits of the Air’s being thin, light, no moving parts (other than keys) with SSD HD, 12+ hour battery, hopefully in a few weeks Retina display, not to mention MacOS and Unix with fewer virii. But it does cost a few cents more per day over four years than the cheapest PC laptop.</p>
<p>These days MacBook Pros are strong enough to handle Parallels or Bootcamp, so technically software compatibility isn’t as much of an issue. If it is, you may use the school computers.</p>
<p>I don’t know what they use in engineering, but in Computer Science a Mac is infinitely better than Windows simply because it’s a UNIX computer. It is very easy to get started in programming and developing on a Mac, get some Linux tools with package managers, etc. Lots of great Mac-only coding software too. I don’t really ever see my professors use Windows, just OS X and Linux. That may be because when they were our age and in grad school there was only UNIX, so they got used to it.</p>
<p>If you do electrical or mechanical, you might need to take a class where you code in C. Coding C on Windows is pain in the butt. On Linux or Mac, it’s natural as UNIX was mostly (or wholly?) written in C. You get some great C compilers after installing Xcode and the developer tools as well.</p>
<p>Linux is Unix-like so that would be fine too, although it has less software on it.</p>
<p>From my personal experience, I would highly recommend the 13-inch Macbook Pro.</p>
<p>I am currently using a 15-inch Macbook Pro, and I can say it’s pretty heavy and large, I wouldn’t recommend it. Also, the screen is not 15-inch, it is 15.4-inch so it gets in your way while attending lectures or so.</p>
<p>My best suggestion is the 13-inch Macbook Pro, the lightweight of the Air is some kind of a gimmick. I do agree that it is very light but it lacks a lot of power compared to the Macbook Pro. Since you are going for engineering, computational power is needed just in case you have to run simulations. Also, Mac is very good for programming and entertainment, the system is UNIX-based so you will have some advantages from apps like Terminal and the fit-size of the Retina screen will bring good entertainment performance. Also, Mac is very secure and errors don’t happen often (unless you are a very geeky guy who play with the OS all the time).</p>
<p>The only drawback is the battery life which is about 9 hours on one single charge. It would depends on your personal use.</p>
<p>Here are a few tips if you are going to get a Mac:
Don’t use Safari unless you need the synchronization with iOS devices because it is a memory-hungry app. You can use Opera for memory saving for other programs to use.
If your budget allows, get 8GB of memory or more although 4GB will just be fine if you know how to use it very carefully. The reason is I personally think heavy computer users and computer science students use multiple programs at a time (I have 8GB of memory and unless I am at break, the amount of free memory will not reach 3GB or more; I use Safari).</p>
<p>“I don’t know what they use in engineering, but in Computer Science a Mac is infinitely better than Windows simply because it’s a UNIX computer.”</p>
<p>This is just false. Unix is just as equipped for development as Windows is. In fact, one could argue that it’s tougher to get started on Unix since it was geared towards programmers since its conception: if you aren’t very competent at maneuvering the command line or programming in general, you’re going to have a rough time.</p>
<p>“It is very easy to get started in programming and developing on a Mac, get some Linux tools with package managers, etc.”</p>
<p>False. Mac OS runs on a different kernel (Darwin? Mach-O?) than most Linux/Unix variants out there, so most unix stuff won’t work without recompiling it (yay, more command line fiddling!)</p>
<p>“Lots of great Mac-only coding software too.”</p>
<p>Er, no. Most everything available for Mac is just a port of some open source Linux thing.</p>
<p>“Coding C on Windows is pain in the butt. On Linux or Mac, it’s natural as UNIX was mostly (or wholly?) written in C. You get some great C compilers after installing Xcode and the developer tools as well.”</p>
<p>Windows is also written in C. (With some CPP additions) So this doesn’t make any sense. XCode is just an IDE for the underlying clang, which is easily replicable with any IDE for Windows, which there are countless varieties of (Code::Blocks, maybe)</p>
<p>Macintoshes also have an incredibly sparse selection of software; You’re almost GUARANTEED to have to boot to Windows or install Wine at some point since there’s that one crucial piece of Windows software.</p>
<p>Also, Macintoshes just cost more, plain and simple. I just don’t see why you would purchase one over a Windows box.</p>
<p>“Macintoshes also have an incredibly sparse selection…” but after 28 years of Mac and programming, have never had that experience. But then I don’t get out much (out of the Mac world).</p>
<p>I’m going to get picky about the part where you say that Linux is a pain if you don’t know command line/programming. That’s not true, either. Sure, if you want to use Gentoo or Arch, it’s going to require that sort of skill, but distros like Ubuntu and Mint are designed to work out of the box with no more technical knowledge than Windows or Mac. I started using Linux in high school with no programming knowledge whatsoever and didn’t know what the terminal was. I somehow managed to get along just fine for 3 years before I learned any programming.</p>
<p>Windows out of the box is not equipped for development. Can you open a bash terminal and start editing with vim, emacs, or nano out of the box? Can you do bash scripting? Any programming languages installed by default? No. In Linux you can, and in OS X you can after enabling developer tools to use clang. It also comes with Python, php, apache, etc out of the box. And Xcode is free. I don’t use Xcode since I am happy with Sublime or vim, but it’s a decent IDE.</p>
<p>So Unix is geared towards programmers… and that is bad? It would be immensely helpful for a computer science or EE major to learn Unix and the Unix philosophy. I have never met a CS professor that thought differently. Most complain that they are too used to Windows and non-UNIX programming. You will probably even learn basic bash shell commands in class too. Also, that is where OS X comes in. Most OS X users don’t even know the Terminal exists, but they can use their computer just fine. That is the main benefit of OS X over Linux. OS X gives you the choice of learning and using the powerful UNIX if you want to. If you don’t want to, there’s GUI stuff for almost everything else and ignore the command line.</p>
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<p>Darwin is an open source variant of BSD, which is a variant of the original UNIX. Linux is Unix-like. So actually, OS X is certified UNIX while Linux is not, so technically OS X is more UNIX than Linux (but they work the same).</p>
<p>I would like to know what UNIX stuff is not on OS X. I’ve gone through many UNIX programming books with no trouble, and if something is missing you can install homebrew and install it with one command (again, learning the command line is a good thing for programmers).</p>
<p>For example, Apple doesn’t include wget by default. So I just went to the homebrew site, copied and pasted the installation code, waited, and then did brew install wget and I had it. I’m not sure what kind of students you know, but I’d like to think any computer-inclined student could do that. Lots of GNU applications are installed by default as well.</p>
<p>There’s also a LOT of stuff OS X has that Windows for some reason doesn’t. It’s 2014, why can’t you use multiple spaces on Windows? Why can’t I scroll a background window? Why is there no easy way to write your own sciprs without any programming knowledge like with Automator? All of that require third party programs. It may not seem like much, but those help in productivity a lot.</p>
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<p>While you are right that many FOSS programs are ported to OS X, the fact is that OS X has a vibrant, active developer community. I was talking about stuff like Textmate (although IDK if anyone uses that anymore), Coda, Coderunner, etc. I barely use FOSS ports on OS X because they are poorly designed with no thought on user experience. Aside from developer stuff there’s just more quality applications, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Even just general programs are better designed and work better. Leaf for RSS, Alfred for searching, Dash for documentation, Mou for Markdown, Transmit for FTP, etc.</p>
<p>I will admit that this is an “extra”, most people can do fine without those programs.</p>
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<p>In my experience, writing portable C code in Windows is annoying, but I will admit I haven’t tried it much since I see C to be more useful in UNIX environments.</p>
<p>The lack of software in OS X is over. It has been for a while. There might be one or two programs (especially for engineering) that aren’t ported, but I have never had trouble finding software, so I don’t know what kind of programs you mean. You might want to list some or something, because I really don’t feel like I am missing anything. I am just a CS student so I may just not be aware of what programs other majors use. But even then, there’s programs like Wine Bottler that make it almost too easy to install Windows stuff without fiddling with Wine.</p>
<p>Personally, I bought a Mac because I wanted a stable, easy to work with UNIX machine that would last me a few years and keep its value. I see it more as an investment and it has worked very well with me. I appreciate the UX/UI design of OS X and its applications when they are done right.</p>
<p>I used a Mac for awhile at work. Far better than Windows, but its UI and lack of flexibility annoyed me some. I think in large part it’s just a matter of what I’m used to, but I also like being able to play around with the interface to suit my particular needs.</p>
<p>But @Matachines you may be overestimating the general computer savviness of the general student. I have met high school seniors who didn’t know that you could resize the text boxes on powerpoints, don’t know how to shrink an image in a document without stretching it, and still type by painfully slow hunt and peck. I’d be annoyed if I had to take a computer skills class in high school, but I’m constantly surprised by how members of the “digital generation” are completely clueless about how to do anything on the computer besides browse the internet. They need a class like that.</p>
<p>I guess you’re right. Even if I meant EE and CS students it might be hard for them. Although that was one of my points about OS X (you can use it without ever doing anything “hard”). And I agree with your last point. There’s a good article about that:</p>
<p>Yup! It was when I got my own computer that I could mess with and put Linux on it that I really learned how to use a computer. But I would argue that a surprising number of people don’t even know how to use office applications at this point. Some people make the argument that the ubiquity of computers will make technical skills and programming a necessity, like knowing how to read and write. This takes the opposite perspective: tech skills will become specialized and quarantined. His prediction may be correct, but I hope it’s not.</p>
<p>@nanotechnology how’s the build quality of Asus N series laptops? any idea (not available here)? mac is out of reach for me as I found 13 inch too small to work with and 15 inch is way too pricy.</p>