Lifelong Mac user. Forced to buy a Windows laptop for school.. any suggestions?

[adonis72]

Hello all,

This is my first thread post, and I’m not even sure I can post this here but I wanted advice from Mac users over windows users.

I’m a student majoring in electrical engineering and I’ve kind of hit a wall with my MacBook Pro. There is software that I can’t run on my Mac like multisim, ultiboard, and a couple other applications. I tried running things via parallels but some of the software straight up won’t load on arm processors because it’s written in x64 code.

I’ve used windows before but I’ve only ever personally owned Mac’s and all of the family computers at my parents house were Mac’s.

Begrudgingly I have to buy a windows laptop. I don’t really know where to start and I wanted to know what kind of windows laptops Mac users can tolerate. Ideally something with decent ish battery life and track pad, and doesn’t sound like a jet engine..

But truly the main thing I want is something aesthetically pleasing. Nothing is as good looking as the MBP or even the Air in my option but things like the Zephyrus G14 or some thinkpads don’t look too terrible...

What’s good? Any advice would be appreciated.
I hope this post is allowed here, but again. I would really appreciate a Mac users advice. Thank you

 

[ifrit05]

Windows on ARM should have a built-in x86/x86_64 app translator (Prism, akin to Apple's Rosetta 2). I use an ancient x86 Windows program at work on my M1 Pro MBP in Parallels.

Look in the Properties dialog of the .exe's you are running and play around with "Windows on ARM" options under the "Compatibility" tab if you're having issues.

 

[maflynn]

What’s good? Any advice would be appreciated.

Consider Lenovo Thinkpads, they're not sexy, but well made, offer good performance, and Lenovo has a crap ton of sales.

I'm less of a fan of Dell as I used too be, bought one for my daughter for school, build quality left something to be desired.

Razer - gaming laptop, over priced, poor support avoid them

HP, decent enough, though I've not used them in years.

Personally, I'd avoid ARM based windows, for a number of reasons; not all apps run or run well. If you want to dabble in some games, that's going to be an issue, and there's performance hits on x86 apps that do run on arm.

The latest iterations of intel chips offers similar performance and battery life as an arm based pc, so you're not gaining any advantage with arm over x86, but you're incurring performance and compatibility with arm.

 

[diggy33]

Consider Lenovo Thinkpads, they're not sexy, but well made, offer good performance, and Lenovo has a crap ton of sales.

I'm less of a fan of Dell as I used too be, bought one for my daughter for school, build quality left something to be desired.

Razer - gaming laptop, over priced, poor support avoid them

HP, decent enough, though I've not used them in years.

Personally, I'd avoid ARM based windows, for a number of reasons; not all apps run or run well. If you want to dabble in some games, that's going to be an issue, and there's performance hits on x86 apps that do run on arm.

The latest iterations of intel chips offers similar performance and battery life as an arm based pc, so you're not gaining any advantage with arm over x86, but you're incurring performance and compatibility with arm.

+1 for Lenovo ThinkPad's. Plus, when you're done with school it will run Linux quite nice.