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College Computer Requirements

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bballguy998

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 28, 2006
12
0
Im a sophomore in HS, but i plan on college as soon as I graduate. Ive always wanted a mac. The problem is, I plan on going into the Engineering or Architecture field. A lot of the programs I'll be using such as (Autodesk Inventor, studio 3D max, Photoshop, Autodesk Agricultural Desktop) need, as far as I know, extensive graphic cards to run on.

With the whole windows on mac deal, would it be ok to buy a mac, considering that in 2 1/2 yrs, it may be easier to run those high graphic programs, or should I go down the windows road, and buy a $500 dollar windows machine that will gurantee the use of these programs?
 
If you buy a Mac with a great graphics card (such as the iMac or MBP) you should be able to run these programs no problem as long as there is a Mac version for it. I actually run Photoshop quite nicely on this 32MB ATI 9550 equipped iBook with 1.5GB of RAM. With a Mac, RAM is your best friend! :)
 
Thanks, I guess I should add though that none of those programs, the ones by Autodesk anyway, have versions for Mac, all of the autodesk programs run on windows OS only :(
 
I use Autocad Architectural Desktop 2005 running under XP on my MBP and it is amazing. It's incredibly fast and boots up more than twice as fast as the 3.0ghz HTP4's here at school.
 
Caitlyn said:
If you buy a Mac with a great graphics card (such as the iMac or MBP) you should be able to run these programs no problem as long as there is a Mac version for it. I actually run Photoshop quite nicely on this 32MB ATI 9550 equipped iBook with 1.5GB of RAM. With a Mac, RAM is your best friend! :)
Click to expand...

A graphics card doesn't affect Photoshop much more than it affects finder. Everything is done on the CPU. The video card only displays the images.

I have to agree, RAM is your friend. RAM affects Photoshop much more than the video card will.
 
bballguy998 said:
Im a sophomore in HS, but i plan on college as soon as I graduate. Ive always wanted a mac. The problem is, I plan on going into the Engineering or Architecture field. A lot of the programs I'll be using such as (Autodesk Inventor, studio 3D max, Photoshop, Autodesk Agricultural Desktop) need, as far as I know, extensive graphic cards to run on.

With the whole windows on mac deal, would it be ok to buy a mac, considering that in 2 1/2 yrs, it may be easier to run those high graphic programs, or should I go down the windows road, and buy a $500 dollar windows machine that will gurantee the use of these programs?
Click to expand...

Why don't you wait till the summer after your senior year I mean honestly you are a bit of a ways off from graduating and alot of things happen in 2 years. I'm a junior in mech engr and I have a old mac and its fine
 
bballguy998 said:
Im a sophomore in HS, but i plan on college as soon as I graduate. Ive always wanted a mac. The problem is, I plan on going into the Engineering or Architecture field. A lot of the programs I'll be using such as (Autodesk Inventor, studio 3D max, Photoshop, Autodesk Agricultural Desktop) need, as far as I know, extensive graphic cards to run on.

With the whole windows on mac deal, would it be ok to buy a mac, considering that in 2 1/2 yrs, it may be easier to run those high graphic programs, or should I go down the windows road, and buy a $500 dollar windows machine that will gurantee the use of these programs?
Click to expand...


Hate to break it to you but the windows road is going to be a much better choice because a lot of those programs are windows only. They do not make a mac verson and yes you can install windows on a one of the intel macs but that is still buggy and lacking some software and it requires a far bit of know how and understanding.
And add to dont go the 500 dollar windows computer. Many architech school require incoming freshman to get a PC laptop and tell you the minumal specs it has to have and it going to cost you about 1500 buck at least and because of the hard internal hard drive requirement you cannt really get a mac book. If you did only like 20gigs could be used for OSX everything else would be devoted to windows.

I hate to be the one telling you the bad news but I would hate to see you speed about 2grand on a mac computer only to find out that you are going to be required to buy at 2k windows PC. You are out 2 grand that you more than likely couldnt afford.

Also you are 2 years from going to college. You dont need to buy a computer for it now. It going to have to be replaced when you go to school any how. But the requirements stated above are no joke. They set the bar pretty high.
 
dukebound85 said:
Why don't you wait till the summer after your senior year I mean honestly you are a bit of a ways off from graduating and alot of things happen in 2 years. I'm a junior in mech engr and I have a old mac and its fine
Click to expand...

I second this opinion 100%. You have two years. A lot will change in the computer market in 2 years. The computer requirements for whatever school you decide to go to will be different then what they are now. Do you even know what school you're going to?

There are still a lot of answers to those questions that you need to know. Take your time.
 
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