I am a first year Mac eng student, I need help from u guys regarding laptops..


As of now , I 'm very confused abt which laptop to buy,,
Perhaps u can help me, I'm using a Dell and I hate it.

How abt an apple or HP?

I don't recommend HP at all. My sister and a friend of mine both had HP's. Their HP's did not last more than a year. Even the Wi-fi broke so easily. We tried plugging in the local internet but it didn't work either. My sister had to buy a wireless USB adapter which is extra cost and extra thing in the USB ports. Another thing about HP is after a while of using it, it turns off. Then if you try to turn it on again, it doesn't turn on fully, u just see the HP (welcome note) then it turns off again. I was even blamed by my sister coz I was the last one using it but it turns out that every HP is like that when I read customer reviews. REALLLLLLY BAD ! My sister's and friend's HP was sent back for repair. It's true that HP is attractive but I don't recommend it.

About APPLE. It has incredible features but do you really think that it's worth paying thousands for low RAM/hard drive memory ? It has limited specs because u are only truly paying for the NAME. But I don't really know much about it. I never bought one, simply because a friend of mine told me not to because of this and this and that. I don't wanna judge APPLE coz I don't have one unlike HP.

Anyways, it's really helpful if you read reviews online. Don't be blinded by the looks/features of the laptop coz they turn out to be not-the-best. hehe. You can buy cheaper ones having better processor speed, more hard drive memory, more RAM and great features.

I'm also looking for a good laptop. I'm thinking of buying SONY VAIO with 2.1GHz, 320 gb hard drive mem, 3 gb ram or GATEWAY with the same specifications. What matters most to me are the three specs i wrote. hehe I need a lot of memory and a fast processor. There are faster processors (2.4 GHz) but theyre a lot more expensive. XD

BTW, what's wrong with DELL ? coz my sister wants to buy DELL to replace her HP.

I hope I helped in some way. Goodluck in purchasing ur laptop.

get an apple macbook, its the best but not for games

Shaiya, your HP sounds effed up/faculty because I know the one my friend's and I have are perfectly fine...

As for Apple.. ehh, theyre nice, but I'm not feeling the price of them too much, especially for someone on a "student budget". But then again, I'm planning on getting one for next year.

I got a Macbook Pro a week ago ( entering first year engineering too! ) and I love love love it already! Since we have to program in C# and design in Solid Edge, and those are Windows-only type things, it really depends on your situation for whether or not you actually want a Macbook... if you're good at coding and stuff, you can do everything on the fly, or if you have free time, you can go to the computer labs and practice there, or you can dual boot like I will be doing.

Originally Posted by samantha__

Shaiya, your HP sounds effed up/faculty because I know the one my friend's and I have are perfectly fine...

As for Apple.. ehh, theyre nice, but I'm not feeling the price of them too much, especially for someone on a "student budget". But then again, I'm planning on getting one for next year.

Sorry bout that Samantha. It's because I based it from my personal experience. I'm not really against HP. It just happens that I got no luck with it.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Toshiba - They tend to be pretty reliable, good HD space, and good processors, and when I was shopping, for less $$ than some of their competitors. Only two problems - one is bloatware, which you have to spend time getting rid of, and two, the mac micro store won't service Toshibas, you have to take them somewhere else, because Toshiba is picky about who they let service their machines.

Have you looked at Tablet PCs ? They are really useful for science/engineering, because you can keep your notes digital , handwritten, and searchable. Plus, they tend to be very portable, and list towards good battery life. They are really good for diagraming, and there have been a couple of occasions where I've been able to model problems in class using some programs available for tablet. That, and Tablet users tend to NOT hate Vista quite so much, because Vista has lots of tablet features.

Top brands when you are looking at Tablets are Toshiba, Fujitsu, IBM/Lenovo, and Dell also has a new one.

Originally Posted by shaiya08

Sorry bout that Samantha. It's because I based it from my personal experience. I'm not really against HP. It just happens that I got no luck with it.

Haha no prob, mine isnt perfect either. I definitely got a massve virus on it while I was at Mac and had to restart the whole damn thing.

Would you bring the tablet to class or would you keep it in your room, use paper in class, and then transfer to your laptop when you are in res?

I'd think that most people with tablets would just bring them to class and write directly on them - you probably won't have the time nor the inclination to transfer all your notes to it later, despite your best intentions. Having said that, I still think that for math-oriented courses, the dead tree solution (read: paper and pencil) still works the best.

As for the question of what laptop brand to buy, all I'm going to say is that anecdote ≠ data. By that, I mean that everyone has a story about how they think the brand of laptop they had sucks. When pressed for more information, I find that about 75% of the time their troubles had nothing to do with the hardware itself - they either contracted a virus, or got bogged down with malware, or generally did something software-related to make them hate the machine. To most people, a computer is an amorphous box that is inseparable from the software that runs on it - hence why you see people literally throwing in the garbage perfectly good computers that have become virtually unusable after they clicked "OK" one too many times when asked to install some random piece of spyware.

Anyway, for the vast, vast majority of people, you'll be fine getting a Dell and never have a serious problem. Don't like Dell for some reason? Then try another manufacturer - chances are it'll be the same result: a fully-functional computer. The only widely-available low-cost brand I'd sometimes be a little wary of is Acer, but that's mostly because of the components they use internally. Again, I'm sure there are tons of people out there happily plugging away on their Acers with nary an issue, no doubt lured in by their low price. Buy the features you need, at a budget you can afford - if you can afford a brand with a slightly better reputation, then go for it.

As for Apple - the hardware is slick, and you will pay a premium for it. But the thing that everyone unfamiliar with them seems to overlook is that it uses a completely different operating system - i.e., it's not Windows. Now, that's not an inherently good thing or bad thing - it's just different. The thing is, if you already are shaky at using Windows, learning a completely different operating system is probably just going to make you hate using your computer. For all the user-friendliness of Apple, you still have to want to like it in order to use it effectively.

If you're in engineering and/or computer science, Apple is sometimes attractive because of its better Unix compatibility (this would be more important in upper-year programming courses - hopefully some engineers can give some input here). For Windows-only software that you may have to run, dual-booting is a good option. Again, you have to want to tinker with your computer a little to make that happen, but for most engineers that won't be a problem :p

To most people, a computer is an amorphous box that is inseparable from the software that runs on it - hence why you see people literally throwing in the garbage perfectly good computers that have become virtually unusable after they clicked "OK" one too many times when asked to install some random piece of spyware.

That is so true. When my dad used to work on computers for a company. Building, maintaining, updated, programming. Sometimes people come in with computers and say that they have problems, that it doesn't work, and that they don't want it anymore. So my dad just takes it home and fixes it within a day or two. At one point we had like 6-7 computers in our house

I speek from experience with the tablet - I take mine to class litterally everyday, and all of my notes are digital. There are no deadtree notes to transfer. I'm also in all math and science courses, and the tablet is particularly advantagous because of that. My diagrams are neater, formulas are easier to find, and One note gives you the ability to link between note pages and sections, so you can crossreference. I've found that most of the paper handouts I get are also available online as pdfs. Tablets are better for science and egineering than they they are for other disiplines contaning less math, and more straight writing. The tablets out on the market now are all very portable, most of them are quite light (under 4 lbs), and advertise a battery life over 4-5 hours. Basically, if you are taking your laptop to science engineering courses, they are the way to go, in my opinion. If you want a behemoth to sit on your desk that you can shift about occassionally, then I'd look elsewhere.

I do see Cippi's point about apple though - I'm doing work for the center for radio astronomy in Calgary, and the enitire department is Macs and Linux machines, purely for the advantage of the unix, since everybody programs in some capcity or another. Admittedly the Mac I work on is a desktop with much, much more processing power than my laptop, I didn't find learning the Mac OS that difficult. They've designed it to be fairly intuititve, so it only took about a week before I was as comfortable with Mac as I was with windows (which I've been using for years).

Macs are not perfect. We come up with almost as many things that cause us to tear our hair out at the office as we do with the windows machines that pretty much all the undergrads here run at home. They are very pretty looking, but you do pay for all that flash.

dude, apple doesn't have low ram or hard drives?

2gb of ram and 250 gb of space is more than enough for any university student, and you can easily upgrade either one of them for very cheap. you can upgrade to 4 gb of ram for $60 and its easy to do yourself.

get a macbook or a pro, they are a bit more expensive than windows pcs, but you get an amazing operating system and if you buy it before sept. 15, you get a free ipod touch, and a free printer.

I have a tablet too and I love it. Its an HP tx2000 series and I recommend it...Its had no problems so far (ive had for 2 months). The 6 cell battery it came with, however, only lasted about 3 hours so I bought an 8 cell for $150...havn't tried out how long this one lasts but ive heard its about 4-5 hours.

If you dont want a tablet, ive heard lenovos are good. They are apperently indestructible and rarely screw up. But they are kind of like apples in that you have to pay more for them even though they have lower specs.

People are naturally scared of change, I think.. hence why not alot of people haven't switched to Macs. Like Cippi said, I don't think computer-savvy people realise that the OS' are different, and I don't just mean the look, which is what I think most people are concerned about sadly.. like it definitely takes some time to adjust to even the smallest things (e.g. Macs don't have that right click option like Windows-based computers).

As for Dell's... I don't like them, but that'as based off experience with them that me and my friend's have had. Honestly, when it comes down to it, check out the specs for your laptop -- a laptop may be pretty, but is it practical? Will you need to upgrade it? How long is the warranty, etc etc