Laptop for College - Engineering

[Antoine3152]

Hello internet!

 

In September I will be studying electrical engineering.

I need a good laptop, used for engineering, programming, excel and browsing. 

My budget is MAX 900 $ but lower = better. 

 

I've been looking at this one : http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834232393&cm_re=UX305-_-34-232-393-_-Product, and waiting for it to be on sale, but I wonder if the CPU might not be enough for engineering. 

 

If anyone who has or is studying in engineering know what I would need it would be really appreciated.  

 

Thanks a lot!

 

(Sorry for my English)

[AnonymousGuy]

You won't be doing anything in university that justifies needing a powerful laptop.  My 2007 laptop with a mid range dual core would still be fine for college.

[saurabh_goyal93]

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834232503

try this one

[Assassin]

You won't be doing anything in university that justifies needing a powerful laptop.  My 2007 laptop with a mid range dual core would still be fine for college.

This literally this. I am doing computer engineering right now and both the electrical and computer engineers take the same courses for the first two years. The heaviest application I had to run was Xilinx for FPGA prototyping and Android Studio. A high powered laptop is worthless just for college. 

[o0Martin]

I'm currently studying an electrical and electronic based engineering course (Although it also has elements from computer science) and before uni I though I would need a laptop for everything everywhere, but providing your university has decent facilities that really isn't the case. 

 

At my university all the computers in the engineering buildings are high enough spec to do any task you need to do during your time at uni, and digital arts students even use them as rendering machines. 

 

So find out what kind of facilities your university has. 

 

Also for electrical engineering you really don't need that high spec of a laptop, some people don't even have laptops, and other than one person on my whole course no one brings them to lectures (Although maybe it's different in Canada)

 

The main thing I would focus on is size and weight, you'll want one you can take around to buildings (unless you plan to study in your residency all the time) and one that if you plan to take it to lectures it wont take up too much space. So the one you picked already is pretty good for that. 

 

Other than that just buy it as if you were buying yourself a new laptop, look at your use cases outside of your course and make sure they fit that. (Unless you have a desktop as well) 

[Blueprint]

I did engineering first year at University (switching to physics now),and the only thing that required a little/fair bit of processing power, was 3D modelling. The i3's were pretty slow on the library computers so I'd say get an i5 although I think the speed of the library computers was affected by the hard drive speeds from the servers. The programmes ran on the University servers themselves I think. I would say definitely get an SSD. Being able to quickly boot up during a lecture for example or quickly write something down is something I could see an SSD being very useful for. 

[AnonymousGuy]

Overall what I would recommend is a 13" or thereabouts with at least 1600x900 screen.  Anything less is just terrible for working with excel or having PDF notes open on one side and OneNote open on the other.  Bring an external monitor or two with you that you can leave in your dorm / apartment.  I also recommend an external keyboard + mouse because working on a touchpad and laptop keyboard long term sucks.

 

Don't be that guy that brings a 17" jet engine laptop with you to lecture that takes up 2 desks.  If you want to game, build yourself a little microATX gaming system.  Gaming laptops are just a giant worthless compromise.

 

I don't know if anything has changed recently, but don't be lured by touch screens.  No one in my years was able to successfully use a stylus to take notes.

[Antoine3152]

Thanks a lot, I'll consider a cheaper laptop only for excel.