<p>I'm currently looking at a refurbished mac book pro Refurbished</a> MacBook Pro 2.3GHz dual-core Intel i5 - Apple Store (U.S.) </p>
<p>Is it going to be just as good as a new one? just a couple hundred less. Also, is this particular model good enough for a computer science major specializing in artificial intelligence? (that's me!)</p>
<p>any help and info is very much appreciated. Thank you, in advance</p>
<p>yeah its great, and you get a 1 year warranty with it.</p>
<p>You are insane to get a Macbook. Any apple products are overpriced and the pieces are pretty much junk. If you are doing computer science, you should be getting a windows computer because I bet most of the programs that they use aren’t made for mac OS. Also, I doubt that any of the mac applications are of use to you.</p>
<p>In a windows laptop, you can get better hardware for less.</p>
<p>If you want to have the ultimate cool factor for AI work, buy a Symbolics Lisp Machine on eBay :-). Awesome, but will run warm in most dorm rooms :-)</p>
<p>Before dropping money on **any **computer find out what the school requires. If you have to dual boot the thing 90% of the time to Windows it’s not worth the effort.</p>
<p>Alright branjac, in your infinite wisdom, could you please point me in a less vague direction? I really want to find one soon. </p>
<p>and turbo, the school didn’t really have any required cpu, it just has the specs that one would need. ram and all that. by the way, how did you enjoy your AI education and how’s it working out for you</p>
<p>Well, the school may require that you use such and such software for AI or other CompSci work. If they require that you use some mystery framework (like Prolog or LISP were back in the dark ages) and said framework is Win-only… </p>
<p>I have been out of the field for a while (wooed over by embedded user interface design) but AI was pretty hot back when I was a young lad (1985 :-)). Right now you see a resurgence of AI related work in voice recognition, for example. Take a look at the work Nuance is doing with Statistical Language Models (SLM) today. Take the voice rec part out (i.e. type the user input in) and we’re back to language research dating to the 80’s. AI has the potential to greatly enhance user interface design and create intelligent user agents… I’d say it has great potential if you focus on the right subjects. Back in my days the right subjects were natural language understanding and we spent lots of work on the subject - only to be thwarted by the puny computers of the time. </p>
<p>Ironically, my employer at the time (very large industrial research concern) did natural language work on vanilla minicomputers while we had a large network of Lisp Machines used for 3D Solid Modeling… A lot of work also went into autonomous robot path planning and the like - another area of work we’re seeing more of today.</p>
<p>I had a lot of fun with AI / Knowledge Engineering, authored a couple papers for major national conferences and all that…</p>
<p>^^Sony VAIO SB would probably compete.</p>
<p>apparently it has problems with its fan and cooling system. so, any others I should look into?</p>
<p>Anything Thinkpad. I bought a T420 for my daughter and have been duly impressed by the build quality and -relative- ease of working with it. I’m waiting next week when Mrs. Turbo gets her new work laptop (an HP Sandy Bridge something or other) to compare, so far the Thinkpad is well beyond better than the (older) Latitudes and XPS’s we get at work. The new E6420 is supposed to be very good also. </p>
<p>Again, if you don’t need to, don’t spend the extra money now but wait till Junior year. It’s not like CompSci 250 requires serious power… Two year upgrade cycle and selling/handmedowning the cheaper freshman/sophomore laptop is not such a bad idea considering the overall education investment…</p>
<p>Haha, I know… I know that I don’t need to buy some 1200 dollar laptop, but I’m impatient about these things. I’m probably going to regret it, but I don’t see me changing my mind. By the way, concerning your post about artificial intelligence, I’m really ignorant about most of the field so I can’t really comment intelligently back on it. From what you’ve said though, it seems like an exciting field to be in, which is why I want to go into it. Like, I’ve done some work with python but nothing too major… So far, I like working with computers but I’m a complete amateur when it comes to them. </p>
<p>How were your first years of college? I imagine it’ll be challenging, but hopefully fun at the same time. The whole cutting edge technology piece appeals to me. </p>
<p>And! what do you think of this list? [10</a> Best Laptops to buy in 2011 - Best Notebook | Tip Top Tens](<a href=“http://www.tiptoptens.com/2011/03/18/10-best-laptops-in-2011/]10”>http://www.tiptoptens.com/2011/03/18/10-best-laptops-in-2011/)</p>
<p>AI was big back in my days, mostly Knowledge Engineering (which did not pan out as much as one would think) and natural language processing, which was a disaster eventually. Of course, games were always popular. AI back then was a good place for people to prove they could do something totally off-the-wall… </p>
<p>My graduate research ended up to be a multi-head monster: Knowledge Representation, Pattern Recognition, Computational Linguistics, AI, and so on, all by building a full blown learning natural language interpreter (on a bleeping VAX-11/780 :-)). This, tho, was grad school, and a heck of a research program. First few years, well, lots of fun. A lot less information available back then than today, so knowledge was precious. Usenet was about our only venue for questions. Much of the AI work was really ‘how would I solve this’ type work rather than ho-hum .NET application. In general, CompSci is a lot of fun, a lot more so than other majors because of the flexibility and creativity involved. </p>
<p>Some things did pan out. A coworker came up with one of the earliest knowledge based AI system to qualify people for car loans. Same guy also did a major assembly sequencing program (sequence things so they can be built cheaper). AI in games, need I say more. Natural language, we’re now seeing it come back. </p>
<p>The big thing with AI/Knowledge Engineering is that one needs to have ‘domain knowledge’. It’s easy, for example, to write a printer driver or some funny app for Android. What is hard is to understand what problem you’re trying to solve, and learn accordingly. Case in point - part of my research was to write a program that could parse English. Nothing to it, except you have to know grammar rules to figure things out, and if you were born on the other side of the Atlantic, and learned English on the Mayflower, best of luck. Acquiring this linguistic knowledge was where the real fun was…</p>
<p>Regarding the list… Everything but the Inspiron, Air, and Alienware. Keep in mind companies make different models to different standards - a Thinkpad is noticeably ‘nicer’ than an Ideapad. Some of the fringe models may have support issues if you’re the only one on campus with one :-)</p>
<p>I suggest the dv6. You can get the HP dv6 quad edition (i7 quad core, 6770m GPU, 750Gb HDD, 1080p screen anti-glare, blu ray, 6gb ram) all for basically $1020. That would last you more than 4 years.</p>
<p>(Coupon code NBP61449)</p>
<p>It’s less than a refurbished mac and has by far better specs.</p>
<p>You gotta realize - it is not a MacBook Pro :-). That’s the allure of the Apple :-)</p>
<p>Computer Science students, in particular, should spend a semester dealing with the Fruit in a relationship OTHER than consumers (developers, partners, and the like) and then their opinion of the Fruit might change by a few clicks. We deal with a lot of brand names since our stuff needs to work with their stuff, and Apple is not one of our, how to put it, easier to get along partners. Unfortunately dealing with Google and Android is not that much better… </p>
<p>To make the decision even more difficult, Microsoft catering is far superior to either Apple or Google :-). And these days Microsoft actually answers the phone, too.</p>
<p>Went with the 14 inch think-pad T420s for around 1400. It was on sale though, so that was good. i5 processor, it seems like it’ll be good enough for me. I wasn’t sure of what LAN antenna to pick… How long did yours take to come in Mr. Turbo?</p>
<p>About a week or so to build and ten days to ship from China. Ours got stuck for 3-4 days in Alaska undergoing customs inspection. Overall about two weeks. Only catch is the shipping box is the actual product box, kinda makes me wonder. </p>
<p>We upgraded the processor to the fastest i5, upped the screen resolution, added a camera for Skype etc, and the $30 wireless upgrade. Windows 7 professional which is getting into my nerves as we speak. </p>
<p>So far battery life is as promised, it’s plenty fast, boots quickly, and the keyboard is exquisite. Plus few of them on campus (I’d say 40% dell, 40% hp, 10% macs, 10% other) despite the college being in an IBM-friendly town. </p>
<p>My understanding of the wi-fi antenna etc is the Intel upgraded one is slightly better but the built-in is fine. Some options add N-band to B/G but N is not as common for now.</p>
<p>AI sounds really intense man! The i5 on the 13’’ MBP will be just fine. If you’re doing visual stuff (graphics/modeling) you might want to get the 15’’ with the dedicated graphics card. If it’s just a ton of computing then you’ll do fine on the 13’'.</p>
<p>I use a MBP for my CS stuff. I dual boot OS X and Win7 using bootcamp. I have yet to encounter a problem. If I need Win7, cool. If I don’t, also cool. I paid ~1550 for my refurbished i7 15" MBP w/Thunderbolt (released Feb 2011).</p>
<p>Link here: [Refurbished</a> MacBook Pro 2.0GHz quad-core Intel i7 - Apple Store (U.S.)](<a href=“Refurbished Mac Deals - Apple”>http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC721LL/A?mco=MjEwNTY4NTI)</p>
<p>Bootcamp info here: [Boot</a> Camp: Windows 7 installation frequently asked questions](<a href=“http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3986]Boot”>Install Windows 7 on your Mac using Boot Camp - Apple Support)</p>
<p>I really don’t see why people naysay the MBP. It’s quality hardware. My 2007 MBP (Intel Dual Core, June 2007, 4GB RAM) still runs like a charm, but the new ones are lighter and have better battery life (plus, after 4 years, I decided it was time for an upgrade).</p>
<p>Conversely, my quad-core desktop that I bought a year ago from Dell with pretty decent specs is having some serious GPU driver issues that I’ve been too irritated to deal with. I pretty much use the MBP exclusively now (for le gaming).</p>
<p>Mrs. Turbo’s work laptop is in - HP EliteBook 8440p. Comparing it with the ThinkPad 420 I bought for my daughter, the ThinkPad has immensely better keyboard and trackpad, screen’s about the same (if you don’t upgrade), the HP appears to be marginally smaller, and the build quality goes to the ThinkPad (marginally). The touchpad on the HP is small but does the job. The HP’s more ‘handsome’ (brushed aluminum vs black whatever). Both machines are exceedingly fast compared to laptops even 2 years old… Both I think have eSATA (something really useful tho with USB 3.0…). For graphics both offer the built in or NVS (4200 vs 3100)</p>
<p>This only goes to show that not spending oodles of cash up front and upgrading every 2 years has merit… Two years ago we would be lucky to lug along an Alienware sized monster for decent performance… In two years I fully expect MacBook Air sized laptops with ‘full size’ performance…</p>
<p>there is a sale on macbook pro 13" base line for $999 at microcenter.</p>