Mac or PC for college?

[OkLoL]

should I buy a mac or PC for college. Compsci major, video editing, gaming? $2500 max

[Xaring]

PC 100% sure. Im a computer science (Computer engeneering) student myself, ive got a MacBook Pro that i use in class, run linux 90% of the time

 

Depending on graphicall prowess, you can get something like

http://portablepicker.com/part/acer-laptop-vn7592g77lb

or go up to something like 

http://portablepicker.com/part/msi-laptop-gt72dominatorprog1666

 

My recommendations: 

grab an SSD+HDD combo (at least 128 GB SSD), 950M or greater, 8GB of ram or more and i5 or more. 1080p screen also is a plus, and 4k screen is overkill IMO (in 4k you need UI scaling and sometimes it fucks up everything).

http://portablepicker.com/parts/laptop/#C=2,4&T=8196,65536&s=12,13&h=3

 

Ive got positive experience with MSI and Razer Laptops.

 

Edit:

Razer lineup is also very interesting,

http://www.razerzone.com/store/razer-blade-stealth is great for prodictivity, although dont expect to game on it (you can get a Razer core + GPu for another 1k to game lol)

http://www.razerzone.com/store/razer-blade in this one you will be able to play.

 

[ChrisCross]

if you dont care at all and like osx you can buy a mac but if your running windows or Linux the normal laptops are way better value. 

[Xaring]

Just now, ChrisCross said:

if you dont care at all and like osx you can buy a mac but if your running windows or Linux the normal laptops are way better value. 

The problem is that most of the course runs in windows or linux, and running 3 OSs on a mac is a real bummer, you dont use MacOS at all  I only use it in my programming lessons as we are using Java right now. 

Before i had to use Codeblocks (for C), windows, in physics i need windows again, in ensambler class we use Linux, etc...

[ChrisCross]

1 minute ago, Xaring said:

...  

thats the problem with osx. its not quite as powerful as Linux and hasnt got the big amount of programs windows can run. 

im using linux and windows on my thinkpad. 

[pettyfan45]

Yeah go with a PC especially if you have take "basic" computer courses that teach you how to run Office and what not usually go off the Windows versions of Office.

Something you might want to look into is getting two PCs a cheep-ish laptop for homework in your Gen-Eds and a more powerful desktop for the video editing stuff. Though if you just want a good laptop, try and stay away from one with RGB lighting all over the place if you will be using it to take notes in class, it gets really distracting to other people if it looks like you are getting ready to start a rave during a lecture.

[pettyfan45]

14 minutes ago, Xaring said:

The problem is that most of the course runs in windows or linux, and running 3 OSs on a mac is a real bummer, you dont use MacOS at all  I only use it in my programming lessons as we are using Java right now. 

Before i had to use Codeblocks (for C), windows, in physics i need windows again, in ensambler class we use Linux, etc...

Maybe look into Virtual Machines so that way when you done with the classes you can easily remove the OSs you don't need.

[Xaring]

51 minutes ago, pettyfan45 said:

Yeah go with a PC especially if you have take "basic" computer courses that teach you how to run Office and what not usually go off the Windows versions of Office.

Something you might want to look into is getting two PCs a cheep-ish laptop for homework in your Gen-Eds and a more powerful desktop for the video editing stuff. Though if you just want a good laptop, try and stay away from one with RGB lighting all over the place if you will be using it to take notes in class, it gets really distracting to other people if it looks like you are getting ready to start a rave during a lecture.

Its a 2011 laptop, the poor thing already suffers enough as it is without the need for VMs ;P (+ I didn't even upgrade to an SSD).

And i do have my main rig at home (I study in my homecity) you can check it out in my profile

 

[bdubbs]

Definitely a PC and run a few VMS. Linux is light enough that you can run a few of those and get a great experience. Make sure you get a decent size HD to do this.  Also you usually won't run into the same compatability issues that OSX tends to have whenever they release an upgrade and bork all your software. 

 

The company I work for whenever our desktop group would release a new OSX update to a new version or the user would do it themselves. Some piece of software would break that the user really needed. Real PITA. 

[pettyfan45]

7 hours ago, Xaring said:

Its a 2011 laptop, the poor thing already suffers enough as it is without the need for VMs ;P (+ I didn't even upgrade to an SSD).

And i do have my main rig at home (I study in my homecity) you can check it out in my profile

 

I could work ok with my POS 2008 Compaq laptop and My ASUS Transformer Prime. worse case if you have good internet see about remote desktop. That is if you don't want to get a new laptop, though I will say you get good laptops on sale around time collage semesters start you if you don't mind get something not bleeding edge.

[GoZone]

What kind of gaming are you gonna do? That is the heavy hitter.

[handymanshandle]

I'm taking you live in the States, so perhaps you could look into getting a System76 laptop, they come with Ubuntu pre-installed but if you didn't want ot use that distro you could just install a new distro and you wouldn't waste a Windows key, unless you wanted to use Windows on a partition the maybe something like the Dell Inspiron 15 7559.

[Xaring]

13 hours ago, pettyfan45 said:

I could work ok with my POS 2008 Compaq laptop and My ASUS Transformer Prime. worse case if you have good internet see about remote desktop. That is if you don't want to get a new laptop, though I will say you get good laptops on sale around time collage semesters start you if you don't mind get something not bleeding edge.

Nah im happy with it, no need to upgrade atm, its just that the latest MacOS Mavericks is quite heavy performance-wise, I rather reboot and switch OSs than put up with the performance loss of moving a MV while mavericks is tolling the system.

[NickTheMajin]

I had a macbook and a desktop I built. Best combination. I haven't found a windows laptop I like anywhere near as much as MacBooks. 

[AyeJayKay]

I would get a MacBook. You'll find in college that outlets are quite scarce and so you'll want something that has really good battery life. 

[NickTheMajin]

Another benefit is that if you lose your charger or it breaks, and you have a windows laptop you're fucked till you can get a new one whereas if you had a mac any of your friends could give you one since Apple only has a couple different chargers. 

[Celmor]

Depends on what you wanna do with it, as you also wanna game on it I would rather lean towards Windows.

I'm studying compter science too and I've bought the Surface Pro 3 and it fulfills the job. Got a desktop PC at home with Arch Linux on it and Windows boxed in a Virtual Machine with GPU pass through so I can still game all I want.

While I was in boarding school (with age 12 till 17) there were practically only Macs to work with so I got some experience with them but I still don't like 'em, just too inflexibel too me. Now that I got more into working with command line and open source tools as I switched to Arch Linux on my main PC I appreaciate Mac a little more...

[daniielrp]

On 11 May 2016 at 6:18 AM, NickTheMajin said:

I had a macbook and a desktop I built. Best combination. I haven't found a windows laptop I like anywhere near as much as MacBooks. 

^I'd do this, this is my current set up for a few reasons. 

Powerful gaming capable desktop that can do almost everything.

Macbook has all day battery life, something no windows laptop does unless they are extremely expensive (more than a MacBook). Newer MacBook Pros all use super fast solid state drives so are quick, have virtually no moving parts and the build allows them to stand up to a lot of bumps and knocks that most cheap plastic Windows laptops can't. Running Windows in a Parallels VM is also great as the speed of the Mac means you can run most things at near native speed for those times you need Windows. 

[gareththomas]

I would say it depends on what your major is. 

I am doing mechanical engineering and i bought a macbook first year and then found out that many of the engineering programs don't use Mac OS so make sure that the programs that you are using will work on the laptop you buy.

[jtjallday]

You could consider getting an older macbook pro that still has an HDD and optical drive. That way you could switch out the HDD for an SSD  better than the stock SSD of the 2016 macbook pros, then use the HDD as external storage. Swap the optical drive for yet another SSD that you can run windows off of. Best of both worlds and it would cost much less than a brand new apple macbook. Keep in mind that the biggest reason macbook batteries last so long is because of the mac OS. I do not believe you would get the same battery life if you were running windows off macbook hardware.

 

Another consideration is that external GPUs are around the corner, and you could game from your macbook as long as you had a thunderbolt port with appropriate transfer speeds.  

[DrMacintosh]

On 5/10/2016 at 0:13 AM, Xaring said:

Its a 2011 laptop, the poor thing already suffers enough as it is without the need for VMs ;P (+ I didn't even upgrade to an SSD).

And i do have my main rig at home (I study in my homecity) you can check it out in my profile

 

Macs dont have to run VMs. Its called BootCamp

[Xaring]

4 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Macs dont have to run VMs. Its called BootCamp

Ye, and i have bootrcamp in it, as I sais above, its just really slow to boot into the diferent OSs as ive got all of them , linux, macos and windows but the lack of SSD makes it a pain in the ass + you dont really need MacOS X for anything... (and if you do need it the class you give the lesson in has Macs in it). And im no Mac hater, but if he is gonna be using the computer for hardcore things, such as rendering if hes gonna be doing 3D modeling or game design or anything of the sort, a windows machine is almost necessary. (As said above too, i got the MacBook Pro for classwork and my tower for the hardcore stuff)

[NickTheMajin]

18 hours ago, jtjallday said:

You could consider getting an older macbook pro that still has an HDD and optical drive. That way you could switch out the HDD for an SSD  better than the stock SSD of the 2016 macbook pros, then use the HDD as external storage. Swap the optical drive for yet another SSD that you can run windows off of. Best of both worlds and it would cost much less than a brand new apple macbook. Keep in mind that the biggest reason macbook batteries last so long is because of the mac OS. I do not believe you would get the same battery life if you were running windows off macbook hardware.

 

Another consideration is that external GPUs are around the corner, and you could game from your macbook as long as you had a thunderbolt port with appropriate transfer speeds.  

 

You aren't going to be able to beat the SSDs in the new MacBooks because they use PCIE. SATA can't hope to even come close. 

That and you're still stuck with the old screen, old battery and old processor. 

 

Honestly there is zero reason to buy an old Macbook Pro. Buy a newer retina unless you can find a used old one for dirt cheap. 

[ionbasa]

Personal favorite:

Macbook Pro + EFIBootmanager + Ubtuntu and Windows. You'll still get an EFI boot option of either Ubuntu, Windows, OSX. 

 

Either that or just use bootcamp. 

[BuckGup]

100% Mac. Most of the time or almost all the time they will have the programs for Mac OSX and if they don't you have boot camp. Trust me having amazing battery life in the field is a must. Also not weighing 100 pounds and being 30 inches