Buying new laptop for engineering

[Stoinberg]

Hello,

 

I currently have a MBP 13' mid 2012, as much as I like this laptop (especially the keyboard, touchpad and mac os), the hard drive failed on me twice in the past year and the battery has started deteriorating to 

the point which I can't rely on this laptop anymore while I'm travelling and at college.

 

I mostly do a lot of writing (word, programming, emails) and I also need to do CAD design on it with programs like Solidworks and Fusion 360. 

I'm looking for a lightweight laptop, that has many i/o ports (2-3 USB + HDMI) and a good keyboard and touchpad that can do cad, programming and mails/office.

Preferably would like a touchscreen but the quality of the panel doesn't really matter to me.

My budget can go up to 2000 dollars.

I'm not going to play games on this laptop.

 

Many thanks.

[Zando_]

If you like the laptop, why not just grab a new battery for $65 from iFixit and then slap in an SSD? I'm still running a mid-2012 pro at work with 16GB RAM and a 500GB SSD, it's just hitting the point where the battery is degraded enough that macOS throws an alert. These are the last gen where you can actually replace the RAM, HDD, disc drive, etc pretty easily. 

[genexis_x]

31 minutes ago, Stoinberg said:

Preferably would like a touchscreen

Need pen support?

31 minutes ago, Stoinberg said:

up to 2000 dollars

in SGD?

 

Any preference on weight, battery life and display size? Mind low sRGB display and non-upgradeable 8GB RAM?

[Brooksie359]

16 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

If you like the laptop, why not just grab a new battery for $65 from iFixit and then slap in an SSD? I'm still running a mid-2012 pro at work with 16GB RAM and a 500GB SSD, it's just hitting the point where the battery is degraded enough that macOS throws an alert. These are the last gen where you can actually replace the RAM, HDD, disc drive, etc pretty easily. 

Macs are not well suited for engineering students.

 

33 minutes ago, Stoinberg said:

Hello,

 

I currently have a MBP 13' mid 2012, as much as I like this laptop (especially the keyboard, touchpad and mac os), the hard drive failed on me twice in the past year and the battery has started deteriorating to 

the point which I can't rely on this laptop anymore while I'm travelling and at college.

 

I mostly do a lot of writing (word, programming, emails) and I also need to do CAD design on it with programs like Solidworks and Fusion 360. 

I'm looking for a lightweight laptop, that has many i/o ports (2-3 USB + HDMI) and a good keyboard and touchpad that can do cad, programming and mails/office.

Preferably would like a touchscreen but the quality of the panel doesn't really matter to me.

My budget can go up to 2000 dollars.

I'm not going to play games on this laptop.

 

Many thanks.

If you are using a touchpad for CAD then you are doing it wrong. You want to be using a mouse tbh. 

[Stoinberg]

23 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

If you like the laptop, why not just grab a new battery for $65 from iFixit and then slap in an SSD? I'm still running a mid-2012 pro at work with 16GB RAM and a 500GB SSD, it's just hitting the point where the battery is degraded enough that macOS throws an alert. These are the last gen where you can actually replace the RAM, HDD, disc drive, etc pretty easily. 

That sounds like a good idea, I didn't know the batteries were so cheap.

[Zando_]

5 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Macs are not well suited for engineering students.

For CAD, they're not that good, but for everything else they're fine. OP said they've been using it up to this point and are only looking for replacements because the battery is toast, if the laptop has been performing fine apart from that issue then fixing it is a hell of a lot cheaper. 

[Stoinberg]

7 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Macs are not well suited for engineering students.

 

If you are using a touchpad for CAD then you are doing it wrong. You want to be using a mouse tbh. 

I have windows installed on bootcamp, 

I usually do office and programming on mac os since I'm doing robotics engineering.

I always bring a mouse with me but macs have a good enough touchpad to at least view and showcase a 3d model.

[Stoinberg]

12 minutes ago, GeneXiS_X said:

Need pen support?

in SGD?

 

Any preference on weight, battery life and display size? Mind low sRGB display and non-upgradeable 8GB RAM?

Don't really need Pen support, touchscreen would be a nice.. touch.

Yes SGD or GBP is fine too.

Don't mind if its not upgradeable, I do most of the heavy workloads on my desktop, don't care about color accuracy.

[genexis_x]

10 hours ago, Stoinberg said:

Yes SGD or GBP is fine too

So you're buying in SG or UK? No preferences on display size and battery life?