Couple Questions.

[CV4]

Hi, so I am going to university in the fall for Civil Engineering.

I plan on picking up a Macbook Pro whenever the next hardware update comes (as long as it is before September).

Will the MBP be fine for the engineering programs I will be using (ex. AutoCAD)?

I know I will have to run them in Parallels/Bootcamp, but will it still be smooth and fast for 3-4 years with a MBP?

 

[Jasonbot]

Wirelessly posted (motorola v3 RAZR (hacked): Opera/8.01 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/2.0.4062/1662; en; U; ssr))

an mbp would be excellent but it would be advised to use boot camp for windows and not parallels because of the 3d support

 

[k2k koos]

Would run fine in Bootcamp, it has 3d support as someone already stated

Autocad itself is not that great, very complex (partly understandable due to the nature of the beast), but has loads of driver issues too, at least on XP systems I've been using it from time to time....
But , no choice there I guess, it's probably requiered by the study you are about to take.

 

[CV4]

I know how to use AutoCAD, and I am not even 100% sure that is what we will use. I was just using it as an example of a Windows native program that would be used for the course and how it would run in Bootcamp.

Thanks for the help.

 

[yippy]

My experience with engineering (Mechanical Engineer at the University of Illinois) is that any special software you need for class there are computer labs available to use with the software installed. However, it is much nicer to do it at home and a MBP will suite nicely for this.

One note though, half of the software I have used in classes has been to expensive for a student to even dream of purchasing themselves and/or only runs on variations of UNIX. This actually can work out to your advantage as a Mac user. Many of the programs that are UNIX only use the X11 windowing system. This means if you SSH into the machine from your Mac using X11 you can run the program, windows and all, from your Mac very easily.

 

[Piepz]

AutoCAD will run just fine on that MBP for 3-4 years.
I'm using AutoCAD 2007 on my 3 years old or so PC and it works like a charm..

I also plan to buy a Mac (iMac 20" thou..) next week and I also will use it for university/work apps. (AutoCAD, InRoads Suite etc) using Boot Camp.. I'm studying Road Engineering thou

 

[AVID]

i'm actually running autocad and microstation V8 on my partner's macbook, with parallel and it works fine, its not the latest microstation though, so 3d graphics is not an issue. It works fine, speed is not an issue.
I'll be getting my mac pro tomorrow, so i suspect it will only improve in performance