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How good is the macbook for college students?

Is a macbook pro a good choice for an engineering major?

  • I'm going to be a freshman in college next year and was considering a macbook pro after hearing great reviews from some friends and teachers. I'm going into civil or environmental engineering and was wondering how engineering programs run on the Mac. Any engineering students have a Mac? Saving money is not one of my top priorities or I wouldn't be considering a Mac in the first place. Thanks in advance

  • Answer:

    As a Mac user for about twenty years and an engineer I can tell you that you are probably better off with a PC as many little engineering speciality applications run on only on PC's. However, the new Mac's can run bootcamp and boot up with Window's NT, so your MacBook will look just like a PC running Windows, and most of programs that you would use for engineering undergrad like Excel and MatLab all have Mac and PC versions. I've heard AutoCAD runs just as fast in bootcamp as on a regular PC. So if you choose the Mac route, 95% of the time you will be OK and the other 5% you will have to improvise (run under bootcamp as PC, write your program, etc.) Lastly you should check with the Engineering Dept of your school and see if they have any specific recommendations.

John at Yahoo! Answers Visit the source

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A lot of engineering schools have computer requirements based on the kinds of software you will be running for engineering courses. I know a lot of schools require PCs over Macs because of software compatibility issues. I would highly recommend waiting until you either hear from your school about their computer requirement or talk to some professors or administrators in Civil or Environmental Engineering departments and see what they have to say. Good luck.

Billy R

As a Civil Engineer who has been out of school for a few years here is my opinion. I had a mac while I was in school and did fine. If I had to use a pc I went to the computer lab or used a friends. During the first couple years of school you will be doing mostly general education coursework using word and excel. Once you get into your upper division coursework you may have to use some engineering specific software. Like almost everyone else said above most if not all engineering software is written for the pc. You shouldnt have too much of a problem in school. Now when you get out of school you may have to ditch the mac as I had to for professional use. For personal use keep the mac. Best wishes in school. Blessings....

dikaiw

Before making the purchase, I would consider asking the civil and environmental department chairs, your advisor, as well as other students in the major, what programs they use the most. In my experience, most of the computer programs for civil engineering were PC based. AutoCAD, Microstation, MATLAB, Primavera Project Planner, Land Desktop, etc. are all PC based programs that you will rely on heavily throughout your coursework. Hope this helps and good luck in your education! P.S. MacBook Pro is an amazing machine... just not too sure if it is needed in a civil curriculum.

Ferreph

Well... If you like the fancifulness of Mac OS X (Leopard), then get yourself a Macbook Pro. You can have best of both worlds - Simply install Windows on your Macbook Pro (With Apple Bootcamp - free) and you can use your Macbook to do your engineering subjects by booting to Windows or using parallel/vmware to use Windows applications while you are on Leopard. See the below video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWlu_YgFeeo

Lincoln

There is a really good reason why Mac has such a limited market share and Bill Gates is richer than God. Most of the engineering programs are written for PC's and getting them to run on Mac is at best a Kludge job.

Ron B

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