<p>Do engineering students work with AUTODESK software on their laptop or on their school computers? What kind of laptop should I get?</p>
<p>The more process-intensive programs are generally provided by school computers. Not that you have any choice - most of these programs don’t offer licenses for student use. The most demanding programs are generally along the lines of Visual Studio, Matlab, Mathematica, etc., which are relatively process-heavy but can be handled quite well by any new computer.</p>
<p>My personal favorite is anything in the ThinkPad line. Very nice line of computers.</p>
<p>I, too, am a ThinkPad fan. You can find a fairly priced laptop that can handle any and all essential programs you may need. In mechanical engineering you will certainly need to become familiar with CAD programs, but I’ve rarely known anyone with any kind of need to run these on their laptop. If you have a desktop, run it on that or else run it on the lap computers at your school. CAD typically needn’t be portable.</p>
<p>Also, Autodesk is pretty uncommon, at least among the schools and companies with which I am familiar. You are much more likely to run into SolidWorks, ProE (called Creo or somethign now) or Unigraphics.</p>
<p>My son is third year mech’e and has been very happy with his ThinkPad. He’s never had an issue with it, and he’s hard on computers. He actually does run Autodesk, Solidworks, and ProE with no problems. He’s got a professional certification and does some freelance work. As stated most students don’t need to run these on their laptops, they use a desktop (he’s averse) or most often the schools computer lab. ThinkPads are powerful and can handle the programs if needed.</p>