<p>I'm a freshman this year at Johns Hopkins University, planning to study Biomedical Engineering [BME] and Premed.</p>
<p>I bought a very bad laptop along, which i really don't like much, because its kind of big and bulky, and has a bad processor [Celeron M 1.6Ghz]. </p>
<p>I was wondering if you guys could give me some suggestions on what laptop to get next?</p>
<p>My budget is around $1000, but I can go a few hundreds here and there. But def. not more than $1300!! I can also buy RAM and a bigger HDD at newegg and upgrade myself to 4GB RAM and 320GB HDD if need be :)</p>
<p>I will use the laptop mostly for my BME and Premed classes--which entails writing papers, MS Office 07, using the internet, watching videos, movies, engineering software like Matlab, and other programs like Photoshop, eclipse, etc.</p>
<p>Now here's the question: should I get the middle of the road Macbook [the $1299 one, my school offers $100 off if that model.] I've heard horror stories about Engineering software not working on the macbooks? what about dual-booting or boot-camping with Vista ultimate? </p>
<p>Last question: for macbook's is the 4GB ram or the 320 HDD needed? how much does it help? </p>
<p>You might look into the Dell XPS M1330 - with Intel Integrated Graphics - a bit cheaper than the MacBook for similar equipment.</p>
<p>You can run Boot Camp and dual-boot with Mac OSX and Vista but you will have to buy the Vista license which is a cost consideration. I think that my son can get Vista or XP for free due to some program at his school but I think that you have to be a CS, CE or IT major to use the department disk. I bought him an XP license before I know about that program.</p>
<p>If you're going to run Vista, you'd be better off with 4 GB of RAM. You can't use some of it if you're going to run Vista 32-bit but the extra 1+GB is worth it. Mac OSX generally runs fine on 2 GB. I have 4 GB on my MacBook Pro but it's only really used when I'm running Windows. Mac OSX is pretty good with memory management.</p>
<p>If you're going to dual-boot, it's nice to have more disk space so that you don't run into space issues as you have to apportion the disk space between the two operating systems. I have the 250 or so GB drive on my MacBook Pro which I find adequate. My XPS M1330 has a 320 GB drive and I find that it is nice for downloading files overnight.</p>
<p>I know from personal experience that matlab and office (08) works great on the macbook. I have the middle of the road one. I have to say it feels much more powerful than what the label says. </p>
<p>I heard that Apple is going to come out with an improved version of the mac book in the next few months, so if it's not very urgent you might as well wait.</p>
<p>I was quite recently looking around for a good laptop for myself and after some extensive research I must say that Dell XPS 15 is an awesome laptop to get. Forget Vista, with the Dell XPS 15 you can get Windows 7 which works wonders. The Dell XPS 15 will work perfectly well with engineering software and other programs like Photoshop and the best thing about it is that the Dell XPS 15 starts at $799.99 meaning that it fits in exactly into your budget leaving you with extra money for the pocket.</p>