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Can't decide on a Macbook Pro for engineering
- Thread starter smc333
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First of all, the vast majority of CAD/3D software is Windows only. If that is what you plan on running, then Mac is probably not the way to go. Sure, you could run Parallels or Boot Camp, but the GPUs in the MacBookPros are not up to snuff. You will want an Nvidia Quadro card if you need serious performance, and that is only found in high end desktop Mac Pros.
I would recommend that you look at the HP Elitebook series. They are very fast and have Quadro cards in them.
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF04a/321957-321957-64295-3740645-3955549.html?jumpid=re_R295_prodexp/busproducts/computing-notebook/hp-elitebk-ntbk-pc&psn=notebooks_tablet_pcs/notebook_pcs
I would recommend that you look at the HP Elitebook series. They are very fast and have Quadro cards in them.
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF04a/321957-321957-64295-3740645-3955549.html?jumpid=re_R295_prodexp/busproducts/computing-notebook/hp-elitebk-ntbk-pc&psn=notebooks_tablet_pcs/notebook_pcs
Just be aware that there is practically no CAD software available for OS X. My school uses Pro/Engineer wildfire 4.0 and it needs to be run on boot camp.Hi everyone,
I'm an engineering student, halfway through my first year, and I am absolutely fed up with this Dell Studio XPS (esp. the 1366x768 resolution). So I'm planning on buying a new Macbook Pro as soon as tomorrow night.
Now, my budget is not unlimited, but I have the money to spend a reasonable amount, so I've lined up a few questions.
Is the 13" 1280x800 good enough? I can stand to loose some of the horizontal and gain some vertical, though ideally the 15" at 1440x900 is a better fit.
What are the advantages of getting the 2.66GHz w/9600 model? How much of a bump is that really? And how portable is the 15" model?
(I do have a netbook with Linux so I won't be carrying it around with me all the time).
With the student discount, I can probably afford the 2.66 model, but I'm just wondering how beneficial it really is.
I can't wait any longer for a refresh at this point, this Dell has gone to hell in a handbasket.
Thanks,
Steve
You will definitely want the 15" MacBook Pro. My school uses both Pro/Engineer, and the Autodesk Inventor 2010 Professional Suite. They both run superb on my 2.4GHz Penryn MBP. I have a 65GB boot camp partition for when I am doing extensive work, however both program actually work fairly well for simple builds through VMware Fusion.
As for the current models performance, the 3 professors I have worked with have the 2.53Ghz 15" MacBook Pros with the 9400m and it runs just fine, even for complex builds. (Kinda weird for an engineering school to buy MacBook Pro's, but whatever). In the end, either 15" will do just fine from what I have seen.
As for the current models performance, the 3 professors I have worked with have the 2.53Ghz 15" MacBook Pros with the 9400m and it runs just fine, even for complex builds. (Kinda weird for an engineering school to buy MacBook Pro's, but whatever). In the end, either 15" will do just fine from what I have seen.
You are right, cheers!
Cheers!
Getting back on topic, to the OP, have you considered a refurbished mac like Harmless Abuse mentioned? In my opinion, unless you want the latest and greatest, you should definitively consider a refurbished mac, and more so now that the possible update is near (apparently). If you can, wait a couple of weeks after the update and grab one of the current models at a very attractive price.
The only thing about refurbs are they don't save much money over the student discount.
So I feel that the 15" MBP is a nice step up for me, and a solid system. I think I'll go for the $1849 (w/Student discount) model. It offers me the 1440x900 resolution, but also gives me a 320GB HDD and the 9600GT for graphics.
It's also a great bootcamp machine with battery life.
Here's the thing,the whole engineering department here at Boston University uses a mix of Linux, Windows, and heavily Macs. Many of the professors and most of the students run on Mac, so it can't be too much of a problem. I think this "get a PC" for engineering is overblown.
And honestly, the work I'll be doing does not need a quad-core machine (I have a quad core PC at home that I could never even come close to maxing out). ENG software is not as intensive as its made out to be, and much of it is run by SSHing into Linux terminals far more powerful than any laptop.
So thank you for your input everybody. If anyone has anything else to add, I'll be glad to hear it. I plan on heading to the store tomorrow afternoon.
So I feel that the 15" MBP is a nice step up for me, and a solid system. I think I'll go for the $1849 (w/Student discount) model. It offers me the 1440x900 resolution, but also gives me a 320GB HDD and the 9600GT for graphics.
It's also a great bootcamp machine with battery life.
Here's the thing,the whole engineering department here at Boston University uses a mix of Linux, Windows, and heavily Macs. Many of the professors and most of the students run on Mac, so it can't be too much of a problem. I think this "get a PC" for engineering is overblown.
And honestly, the work I'll be doing does not need a quad-core machine (I have a quad core PC at home that I could never even come close to maxing out). ENG software is not as intensive as its made out to be, and much of it is run by SSHing into Linux terminals far more powerful than any laptop.
So thank you for your input everybody. If anyone has anything else to add, I'll be glad to hear it. I plan on heading to the
store tomorrow afternoon.It seems as if you have it all figured out, but I'll add my 2 cents anyways.
If I were in your shoes I'd buy the 13" model and use a nice external display when possible. There is a significant difference in portability between the 13 and the 15, and I would want to do my serious work with a proper display and mouse/keyboard anyways.
And I wouldn't worry about the Mac with Engineering. It's been a while since I did any significant research but when I did, nothing taxing was actually done -on- my PC. Anything I was pecking away on was nothing but a dumb terminal.
If I were in your shoes I'd buy the 13" model and use a nice external display when possible. There is a significant difference in portability between the 13 and the 15, and I would want to do my serious work with a proper display and mouse/keyboard anyways.
And I wouldn't worry about the Mac with Engineering. It's been a while since I did any significant research but when I did, nothing taxing was actually done -on- my PC. Anything I was pecking away on was nothing but a dumb terminal.
I'm on Windows and was thinking of getting a MBP. I use Matlab and Mathematica too. You suggest that I should not use a MAC?
13" would be basically pretty useless for him without an external screen. For eng'g you really want a 15" at the least. Unless you just want to take notes when you're in class.
Thanks for the help guys.
I do have a 23" screen I could hook the 13" up to, which would in turn save me a lot of money, though I do love the real-estate provided by the 15". That said, portability is nice, as there are some times I want more than my netbook with me.
Anyhow, I'm going to get some food at the dining hall, and make the mile + 1/2 walk to the Apple store.
I'm going to look at a few things:
1) The portability of the 13" vs the 15". I at one time had a 13" for two weeks, and I LOVED the size of it, how easily I could move it, place it, and use it.
2) Resolution difference between the two
3) See if there is any immediate difference between the 9600M GT and the 9400M.
Oh, and also. Could I take the 500GB HDD out of my Studio XPS and put it in the Unibody MBP that I buy?
I do have a 23" screen I could hook the 13" up to, which would in turn save me a lot of money, though I do love the real-estate provided by the 15". That said, portability is nice, as there are some times I want more than my netbook with me.
Anyhow, I'm going to get some food at the dining hall, and make the mile + 1/2 walk to the Apple store.
I'm going to look at a few things:
1) The portability of the 13" vs the 15". I at one time had a 13" for two weeks, and I LOVED the size of it, how easily I could move it, place it, and use it.
2) Resolution difference between the two
3) See if there is any immediate difference between the 9600M GT and the 9400M.
Oh, and also. Could I take the 500GB HDD out of my Studio XPS and put it in the Unibody MBP that I buy?
I am a scientist. I have the mac versions of mathematica, MATLAB, and R. I also run Vista on VMWare Fusion just so that I can run SAS, which is PC only.
I am happy to report that there's no performance issue with SAS running in virtualization whatsoever in a 15" MPB (early 2008, 2.4GHz Penryn, 4GB RAM, 8600GT)
I certainly wouldn't let one or two PC-only programs to prevent me from enjoying the daily pleasure of using a Mac. I recommend virtualization for these PC-only programs.
I am happy to report that there's no performance issue with SAS running in virtualization whatsoever in a 15" MPB (early 2008, 2.4GHz Penryn, 4GB RAM, 8600GT)
I certainly wouldn't let one or two PC-only programs to prevent me from enjoying the daily pleasure of using a Mac. I recommend virtualization for these PC-only programs.
I agree with mox123. I too have Mathematica, MATLAB, and R running perfectly fine on Snow Leopard. My lecturers are some of the leading researchers in Machine Learning and they all use MacBook Pros. While this doesn't prove anything, it is highly probable that if your work revolves around above mentioned programs or LaTeX or Java, you'll fine. In fact, you will be more than fine, you will save a lot of time.
Post by ryannazaretian is very misleading and should be ignored. How can one single bad experience lead one to conclude that aforementioned programs are "not made for OSX" is beyond me.
Post by ryannazaretian is very misleading and should be ignored. How can one single bad experience lead one to conclude that aforementioned programs are "not made for OSX" is beyond me.
That isn't true at all. He needs to weigh the convenience of the extra portability against the convenience of the additional screen real estate.
I managed to earn 2 engineering degrees with no laptop at all, so I would imagine losing those extra pixels won't cause too much disruption.
You're right, as far as the first paragraph goes. From my perspective, when running a technical app, the resolution of the screen in front of me is very important. It is always a compromise in terms of the size of the screen you want in front of you and the desired portability.
And I know what you mean as far as the 2nd paragraph goes. When I was doing my EE there sure weren't many laptops around. The CompSci building did have a nice Next lab in it though. I didn't do any coding on them, but I do remember admiring their GUI at a time (which was very advanced). Pretty amazing what SJ has accomplished over the years.
You can hide the dock
OP: I would get the 13 with an external monitor personally. Cheapest option
That was what I did when I was an engineering student lol
I wonder why many people who use os x don't know about or don't use this feature. I have friends who goto great lengths to make the dock as small as possible and use the magnification feature to make it huge while hovering over.
I agree with mox123. I too have Mathematica, MATLAB, and R running perfectly fine on Snow Leopard. My lecturers are some of the leading researchers in Machine Learning and they all use MacBook Pros. While this doesn't prove anything, it is highly probable that if your work revolves around above mentioned programs or LaTeX or Java, you'll fine. In fact, you will be more than fine, you will save a lot of time.
Post by ryannazaretian is very misleading and should be ignored. How can one single bad experience lead one to conclude that aforementioned programs are "not made for OSX" is beyond me.
I had to call both The Math Works and Wolfram to get Mathematica and Matlab working on Snow Leopard. Mathematica had 2 problems. It couldn't use 64bit Java which was set as default, and they lead me through a way to hack the registration file to manually activate it because it couldn't get the computer ID. Matlab also had registration problems and I had to call them to get it activated. Both programs run slow compared to their Window's versions. Mathematica launches in under a second on Windows 7 while the OSX version takes about 15 seconds. Matlab worked for about a week on OSX, then stopped working. Found out that it deactivated itself. Matlab on Windows works just fine. Never had a problem. If Mathematica is really made for OSX, why does it rely on Java? The Windows version doesn't. I've had hell with Snow Leopard and downgraded. Mathematica and Matlab now both work, but the Windows' versions seem better. I should also mention Xcode. Personally, I love Xcode, but I can't use it as the compilers are different. Professors will want you to use Visual Studio, and I got in trouble for using Xcode last year when my code wouldn't compile on Visual Studio.
You can't just through out people's responses. This has been my experience. Who is to say that the OP won't have the same. I voiced my opinion. In the engineering world, you have to have Windows. You can't deny that, and BootCamp is a terrible solution for an engineering notebook. If the OP was buying an iMac, I wouldn't have anything against it, but the truth of the matter is that BootCamp on the Apple notebooks is terrible. I have 1 hour of battery life, the trackpad is useless, and hell, you can't even turn off the keyboard backlight when it's dark without a separate program.
The OP can get a much more powerful notebook from another manufacturer. My MacBook Pro has broken on me too many times in the past year and a half. This laptop came with a broken keyboard so it had to be sent right back in for repairs, then about a month ago I had to send it back in for repair because the WiFi card went out, the optical drive went out, and the audio port was getting stuck. That's 2 trips to the Apple repair center, and they still haven't replaced the screen that has dust collecting under it. This is also my second Apple laptop as my first one had more problems. I had to send it in 3 times before Apple sent me the one I currently have. The hard drive went out, the trackpad and motherboard went out 3 times in the course of 2 months, and the battery started to swell. The laptop was only 5 months old at the time when it was replaced.
How the hell can I recommend a Mac? I can't. My experience has been horrible. I have to keep my 5 year old Dell E1505 as backup because I never know when the Mac is going to break again.
Ryan, I respect and gladly appreciate your response. However, I feel your results are not typical. I'm sorry to hear you had all of those problems, and it sounds like a string of terrible luck, but most of the eng students here actually run Macs.
Anyway, thank you guys all for the help. I made my purchase at the Apple Store Boylston St in Boston about 30 minutes ago. I went for the lowest end 15", I'll be comfortable with 1440x900 for most tasks, and use the 1080p monitor only when I have to (I really prefer Apple's trackpads to a regular mouse).
Thank you again, and I'll post back here a little later regarding how the machine handles.
Anyway, thank you guys all for the help. I made my purchase at the Apple Store Boylston St in Boston about 30 minutes ago. I went for the lowest end 15", I'll be comfortable with 1440x900 for most tasks, and use the 1080p monitor only when I have to (I really prefer Apple's trackpads to a regular mouse).
Thank you again, and I'll post back here a little later regarding how the machine handles.
If you do pickup the 13", you can always try and virtually increase your resolution using:
AppleDisplayScaleFactor .XX (replacing .xx with a percentage of scale)
While I've never had problems with my 13" or had to use this, I did use it on a Mini 9 I had OS X installed on. For serious resolution needs, I always hook up to my 24" Dell anyways. I got the 13" for portability.
AppleDisplayScaleFactor .XX (replacing .xx with a percentage of scale)
While I've never had problems with my 13" or had to use this, I did use it on a Mini 9 I had OS X installed on. For serious resolution needs, I always hook up to my 24" Dell anyways. I got the 13" for portability.
Thanks, I think there's a good deal of information in here for people looking for a similar purpose.
So far the machine is running great. I ssh-ed into an ACS terminal using X11 and ran some MATLAB perfectly fine.
Cheapest option perhaps. 'Best' option I don't think so.
For the hours and hours your going to spend on your computer through your schooling forget about the "cheapest option" and decide what is the best option for you, if a larger screen size with mobility is most important get the 15", if smaller size, portability and weight is more important get the 13", but do get an external monitor for your desk too.