My what a bltch session you started.
Hey there,
Due to the projected time of release of the new pro in the fall, do you think the 13inch air would work for an engineering student.
No. Mainly due to the lack of a discrete GPU. This assumes that you get involved a significant amount of signal processing that might be associated with exploration. Of course petroleum engineering can imply lots of things. However discrete GPU can be exploited to a large extent by a number of engineering related apps.
I was really looking forward to the new pro, but will need a computer for my August start of classes.
Then get the current Pro. Seriously Haswell doesn't do that much for you performance wise though it helps power significantly.
I'm not 100 percent on programs ran by petroelum engineers, but I'd assume it's similar to that of other engineer students. Any help is appreciated!
Your best bet is to talk to the university or some of the students in the exact program you will be following. There can be massive differences in hardware requirements to run some of the apps common to engineering. If you don't know what apps the program will be using then you have zero chance of buying the right hardware.
Beyond all of that I'm fairly certain the first couple of years will not demand a lot of your laptop. Again I could be wrong there and students that have taken your program would likely be able to clue you in better but generally your first year of college involves a lot of building of base knowledge. There is a good arguement for buying cheap for your first year or so and then upgrading to a more capable machine.
In the end the decision is yours but a word of caution, prefer machines with maxed out RAM, especially on the AIRs. 8GB isn't really a lot today, especially if you choose to run Windows in a Vitual Machine.
Of all the suggestions and silly arguments seen in this thread so far, the best suggestion is to go with a 13" MBP. The other thing I'd suggest is to hold off to the absolute last minute. We still don't know when the MBP will come, sadly I suspect the end of September. However it is always possible they might come earlier.
By the way normally I'd argue against going to college with a brand new high performance computer as you won't need it early in you school year. A laptop from Apples refurb operation would save you a few bucks. The problem is this years Haswell machines provide one thing all students need - battery life. If the Haswell based MBPs don't come out in time, buy an AIR and be happy; it will most certainly last you a couple of years. In the end the battery life will likely be more useful to you than the extra CPU and GPU performance of the MBP.
