This fall I will be studying mechanical engineering. The main programs I will use will be Matlab, Mathematica, and some SolidWorks. I will have workstations available for use at school. I bought a Lenovo Y510P and I could not stand the trackpad. Otherwise, the machine's specs were crazy, especially for the money. Now, i'm looking for something with good build quality. I'm looking at the Acer S7-392 with the i7-4500U and 8 GB of RAM. This i7 is only a dual core, but I think it will be more than sufficient for most tasks. The Acer also has the SSDs configured in RAID 0, so I feel as if the Acer will launch applications more quickly than the Lenovo. Do you think the Acer will be powerful enough? I wouldn't mind a laptop with a dedicated graphics card, but nothing seems to compare with the Y510P at anywhere around the same price point. I don't especially like the build quality of other systems like MSI or Sager. Suggestions?
Laptop for college engineering?
Matlab works on both Mac OS and Windows.
Solidworks only works on Windows.
Just a tip as a recent engineering grad.
1. Matlab will cost you at least $99 for the student edition and Solidworkds Student version is not free as well and only lasts for a small time period and only works when you are connected to your schools VPN internet.
2. Your school will have several computer labs around campus with these programs installed on fast reliable school computers. You are already paying for it in your tuition. Look at your tuition bill. It should be called Tech Fee or similar.
3. You will only use these programs for 1 class, in 1 semester, once per week for a lab, during a 4-5 month period, and then you probably won't be seeing them for any other class.
4. Knowing this, you really shouldn't spend so much money for a laptop for those programs. Especially since Matlab can run on some of the most basic computers. It has low software and hardware requirements. You will be using your laptop mainly for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Internet.
Those laptops you are looking at are overkill. I used computers with 1GB and 2GB of Ram and they did just fine running Solidworks and Matlab and Simulink. No freezing or slowing down.
2GB are enough for those programs. 4GB would be amazingly fast. 8GB is not necessary but if instantaneous speed is your desire, you can't go wrong with it.
Honestly, unless you're explicitly stated by the school that you'll need a laptop for your program, I wouldn't worry too much about your choice of laptops. You'll be mostly taking math and physics notes in your first year which are hard to input into a computer anyways (pen and paper ultimately win). However, if you're seriously considering getting a laptop for school battery life and portability (weight & size) should be a bigger factor than power. You'll be using your laptop all day and you'll need something that lasts.