Laptop: replacement for an engineering student

[Supdude]

I started with a dell precision my freshman year and that proved to be a disaster. 2.5 years in I am getting overheating, blue screens, random power failures, battery lasts about 30 mins, so fricking heavy and big, always slow, insane boot-time. Anyway my parents agreed to replace it for my Christmas present this year and I have spent like a month looking at everything. Very overwhelming so I was wondering if the community had input.

 

I am terrified of apple products but I respect them so the beefed up 15 inch macbook pro is my benchmark. Anything under $2,100 is game.

 

Purposes: Lots of CAD (mostly SolidWorks), video, Matlab, and other intermediate engineering/programming software. Some Photoshop, video editing, and medium gaming.

 

Ideal specs

i7 processor

16 GB RAM

256 GB SSD

14-15 in display

1080p+ (1600 or 1800 would be sick)

5+ hrs of battery life

easy to fit in a backpack

Touchscreen? I really like the idea of CAD with a touch screen

 

 

Things I am currently looking at:

Samsung ATIV Book 9 2014 ed

Alienware 13 (i know not a 15")

XPS15 touch

MSI Ghost

Razerblade

Lenovo Y50 UHD Multitouch

Origin something (custom stuff is confusing)

 

[Guest Philosophy]

Lenovo or MSi have my vote both are excellent.

[Brandogg255]

XPS or Lenovo they are two good options also the msi

[m2rt]

Stay away from "gaming" laptops with nvidia cards if you mostly use it for solidworks. RealView wont work!. You need quadro or firepro for that.

[Supdude]

Stay away from "gaming" laptops with nvidia cards if you mostly use it for solidworks. RealView wont work!. You need quadro or firepro for that.

 

I feel kinda stupid for asking but could you explain that a little more? RealView?

[m2rt]

RealView is graphics functionality in SolidWorks that enables real-time rendering in the SolidWorks graphics area. This is sometimes required to see certain textured appearances. There might be some hacks available to general GPU s but it might not work 100%.