Need a laptop for engineering student?

Question

I will be studying mechanical engineering in the Fall. I'm searching for an affordable laptop that is easy to carry around and a decent battery life. I'll be surfing the net and listening to music. I probably wont be doing any hardcore gaming.

The college of engineering will be providing SolidWorks, Labview, AutoCAD, Microsoft DreamSpark, and Matlab.

Does anyone have recommendations. I would really like a tablet and keyboard type thing...but Im not sure if they are reliable for engineering stuff. Ive been looking at the ASUS Vivo Tab RT, would do you guys think?

Answer 1

Tablets are no good with those engineering programs. My girlfriends HP tablet laptop was so slow when those programs were running and would freeze or crash.



When I ran those programs on a Macbook Pro with BootCamp and Windows installed, they were very fast.



Other good laptops are Sony and Toshiba. Just look for 64 bit, at least 4GB of ram, and Windows 7.



I don't think any engineering software is compatible with Windows 8 yet.

Answer 2

You could take a look at a Chromebook

http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebooks.html



Chromebooks provide a small lightweight portable computer with decent battery life. The only down side is that the current models do not have the touchscreen (the Pixel does), however you can make it into a touchscreen by buying touch film with a USB adapter and then just placing it over the display. The memory should be enough to run any of the programs that you listed.



As for the laptop you mentioned it seems too expensive for what you would like to do. Even if you get it on amazon for 42% off it is still $100 more then the chrome book.



One thing you can be sure about is that there will be absolutely no games with good graphics that will be able to run well on these computers as they have no dedicated video card.

Answer 3

For study purpose even some ill laptop of 15000 will do, 60,000 is barely for gaming What do u wanna do with ur laptop? C, C++, JAVA? those will artwork even on historical laptop like homestead windows ninety 8 So be particular and say u want a gaming laptop, choose for Dell XPS sequence