College Laptop

[DaKCMan AP]

Originally Posted by Unleash_the_Phury

600 bucks for a laptop, you better spend the required money to get the best anti-virus on earth, and don't download a thing onto it, because within 8 months you'll be seeing blue-screens like they were pigeons; everywhere, all the time, and accompanied by shit.

I myself am going into my third year, and I had my previous laptop (799 at Future Shop) for maybe half that time. The rest of the time it was in Surrey or Toronto or God knows where getting fixed for the same damn issues over and over. With laptops especially, you get what you pay for, and with a 600 dollar computer, you're not getting too much.

I've since bought a Macbook, and it's been the most incredible machine I've ever owned. Despite it's admittedly steep price, I think the benefit of having my own computer throughout the course of a full academic year makes up for it. If you're in your first year, I'd hold onto your money and save to buy a Mac as soon as you can; not only is everyone at your school going to be telling you this within a week of you having been there, but in all honesty you won't likely need to write more than seven or eight papers anyway, depending on your major, which can most likely be done in your library. And as a first year, familiarizing yourself with the library's inner workings is going to be an invaluable skill as you progress. Trust me on this.

Not really. There are some good laptops that are very inexpensive right now. As far as the virus, as long as you have protection software, and aren't dumb, you shouldn't have trouble.

[Braincase]

My wife is tenured Mechanical Engineering faculty at KU. Very few students in ME use Mac's, and this is at KU, which has a pretty substantial population of Mac users. What you should look into is the software they use in the department, and if they are using Solidworks, get a PC. Solidworks isn't available for the Mac. Besides, if a Mac is $400.00 more, it's kind of silly to go that route, as a good anti-virus & internet security package is a whole lot less than that.

Where are you going to school?

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by DaKCMan AP

Not really. There are some good laptops that are very inexpensive right now. As far as the virus, as long as you have protection software, and aren't dumb, you shouldn't have trouble.

Furthermore, as much as I like macs, I'd think twice and double check with your school before I bought a mac as an engineering student. Today's macs can run windows programs, but if you're going to be required to run some windows programs you might as well just get a windows machine and save a few hundred dollars.