Laptop for University

[tzebe_tzebe1]

Hello,

 

So, I'm going to university in about 2 months as an engineering student. I looked around for laptops and I found that the Dell XPS 13 and 15 are both really good laptops. However, recently I saw the new 13 inch Macbooks which have a 2.7 ghz I7-8 generation processor which has turbo boost to 4.5 ghz. I know that Mac's have Bootcamp so I can put Windows on it and carry out the same tasks as I would on a windows laptop. I was wondering if the Mac is then better and would actually be worth getting if it has these specs and can run both OS on one machine. 

By the way, I have a large budget so that's not a restriction. 

 

I hope someone could recommend me something and give their thought on this. 

Thank you in advance

 

[spellmanuk]

7 minutes ago, tzebe_tzebe1 said:

Hello,

 

So, I'm going to university in about 2 months as an engineering student. I looked around for laptops and I found that the Dell XPS 13 and 15 are both really good laptops. However, recently I saw the new 13 inch Macbooks which have a 2.7 ghz I7-8 generation processor which has turbo boost to 4.5 ghz. I know that Mac's have Bootcamp so I can put Windows on it and carry out the same tasks as I would on a windows laptop. I was wondering if the Mac is then better and would actually be worth getting if it has these specs and can run both OS on one machine. 

By the way, I have a large budget so that's not a restriction. 

 

I hope someone could recommend me something and give their thought on this. 

Thank you in advance

 

I use a mac to bootcam for the extact same reasons theres a few things i use that just work better on w10 but i prefer to use MacOS day to day. Unfortunatly to have a good experiance with bootcamp you need to have a large drive so youre going to have to spurge for at least the 1tb like i did so then you can haver 512gb per OS (presuming youre going to split it 50/50)

 

if youre going to be doing CAD then the 15" macbook is the better option since it has a (weak but better than noting) graphics card or if youd rather the 13" like me then an eGPU may be a good investment for when your at a desk.

[DrMacintosh]

The new 13" with the quad cores are small beasts of power and if you have the budget, I wouldn't hesitate to pick on up. If you take money out of the equation, the MacBook really is much better than the XPS models imo.

 

It really comes down to if you think you will use and get value out of macOS. 

 

Will you be using any of its pro software like FinalCut Pro? or Logic? Do you want/need a free (and pretty badass) Office Suite for free? iMovie? Garageband? Do you have an iPhone or some iTunes purchases? Are you tired of Windows 10s BS and occasionally need to escape from it all? Lol

 

If you answered yes to even a few of those, then I say it would make sense to get the Mac. 

 

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, peej said:

Unfortunatly to have a good experiance with bootcamp you need to have a large drive so youre going to have to spurge for at least the 1tb like i did so then you can haver 512gb per OS (presuming youre going to split it 50/50)

External drives exist lol. 

 

An exFAT formatted USB HDD or SSD would be a great companion to a MacBook running Bootcamp. 

[spellmanuk]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

External drives exist lol. 

 

An exFAT formatted USB HDD or SSD would be a great companion to a MacBook running Bootcamp. 

yeah but thats annoying if youre not at your desk alot i like to travel light so the less crap you have to carry the better in my eyes if youve got the money to buy the larger internal SSD then why not get it and simplify life 

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, peej said:

yeah but thats annoying if youre not at your desk alot i like to travel light so the less crap you have to carry the better in my eyes if youve got the money to buy the larger internal SSD then why not get it and simplify life 

A little annoying vs. hundred or even thousands of dollars on internal SSD space

 

I know which I would choose. Even if you got a 1TB SSD, you would still only have less than 512GB per OS

[tzebe_tzebe1]

6 minutes ago, peej said:

I use a mac to bootcam for the extact same reasons theres a few things i use that just work better on w10 but i prefer to use MacOS day to day. Unfortunatly to have a good experiance with bootcamp you need to have a large drive so youre going to have to spurge for at least the 1tb like i did so then you can haver 512gb per OS (presuming youre going to split it 50/50)

 

if youre going to be doing CAD then the 15" macbook is the better option since it has a (weak but better than noting) graphics card or if youd rather the 13" like me then an eGPU may be a good investment for when your at a desk.

Alright, yes then getting the bigger SSD makes life easier. But what exactly is that eGPU and you think the 13 inch wont be able to handle CAD? 

[tzebe_tzebe1]

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

The new 13" with the quad cores are small beasts of power and if you have the budget, I wouldn't hesitate to pick on up. If you take money out of the equation, the MacBook really is much better than the XPS models imo.

 

It really comes down to if you think you will use and get value out of macOS. 

 

Will you be using any of its pro software like FinalCut Pro? or Logic? Do you want/need a free (and pretty badass) Office Suite for free? iMovie? Garageband? Do you have an iPhone or some iTunes purchases? Are you tired of Windows 10s BS and occasionally need to escape from it all? Lol

 

If you answered yes to even a few of those, then I say it would make sense to get the Mac. 

 

Yes seems to me that the Mac would be the better option for me then especially like @peej said; I can use features from Windows 10 on the bootcamp. 

[DrMacintosh]

2 minutes ago, tzebe_tzebe1 said:

Alright, yes then getting the bigger SSD makes life easier. But what exactly is that eGPU and you think the 13 inch wont be able to handle CAD? 

An eGPU is a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure with a PCIe x16 interface. You plug in a desktop AMD GPU into it and plug the enclosure into your Mac and now your Mac has desktop graphics. 

 

The Mac can handle CAD yes. Especially with the new Intel quad cores. The Iris integrated graphics are no slouch either. 

[spellmanuk]

2 minutes ago, tzebe_tzebe1 said:

Alright, yes then getting the bigger SSD makes life easier. But what exactly is that eGPU and you think the 13 inch wont be able to handle CAD? 

it can handle Cad just fine it just get a little hot but then what computer wouldnt. My 13" macbook which is last years dual core can handle cad fine so the new quad core will fine.

 

as for the egpu it will just make things easier for the computer its basically just a graphics card you plug into the laptop like an external harddrive

[tzebe_tzebe1]

3 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

An eGPU is a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure with a PCIe x16 interface. You plug in a desktop AMD GPU into it and plug the enclosure into your Mac and now your Mac has desktop graphics. 

 

The Mac can handle CAD yes. Especially with the new Intel quad cores. The Iris integrated graphics are no slouch either. 

Oh okay, yea I will look into that ascwell. Do you and @peej have any recommendation on which eGPU would do the job ? 

[tzebe_tzebe1]

@peej @DrMacintosh By the way, do you recommend the 8GB or 16 GB RAM? Or would 8GB be enough 

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, tzebe_tzebe1 said:

Oh okay, yea I will look into that ascwell. Do you and @peej have any recommendation on which eGPU would do the job ? 

They really are build it yourself kinda of things. 

 

You can pick any enclosure you want and anything better than an AMD RX 460 is supported. 

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, tzebe_tzebe1 said:

@peej @DrMacintosh By the way, do you recommend the 8GB or 16 GB RAM? Or would 8GB be enough 

16GB if you can afford it. macOS doesn't really need it but Windows probably will. 

[tzebe_tzebe1]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

16GB if you can afford it. macOS doesn't really it but Windows probably will. 

Alright makes sense 

[spellmanuk]

1 minute ago, tzebe_tzebe1 said:

Oh okay, yea I will look into that ascwell. Do you and @peej have any recommendation on which eGPU would do the job ? 

well black magic just relased one designed specifically for the mac but really any of them will work just bear in mind MacOS only offically supports AMD cards id say just be safe gor the 16gb if you can afford it as its non replaceable at the moment i peak at 6gb of ram usage when im mid work so 8gb will do the job now but im guessing you want to keep this computer at least till your done with university so 3/5 years

[dizmo]

I remember tests showing that Windows on a Macbook made them absolutely shit the bed when it comes to battery life.
Not sure if that's true with the newer generations, but it's something to consider.

 

That said, 8th gen Intel processors are available in much cheaper machines.

[spellmanuk]

Just now, dizmo said:

I remember tests showing that Windows on a Macbook made them absolutely shit the bed when it comes to battery life.
Not sure if that's true with the newer generations, but it's something to consider.

not really cant say ive ever noticed much differance midn when your under load on barrety oyur batter will die regaurdless

[DrMacintosh]

7 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I remember tests showing that Windows on a Macbook made them absolutely shit the bed when it comes to battery life.
Not sure if that's true with the newer generations, but it's something to consider.

 

That said, 8th gen Intel processors are available in much cheaper machines.

Thats for 15" models since they can't switch to and from the iGPU. 13" models perform perfectly.

[DrMacintosh]

8 minutes ago, dizmo said:

That said, 8th gen Intel processors are available in much cheaper machines.

Price is apparently no object for OP.