MacBook Pro for electrical engineering

[Fernandes]

Hello everyone, iam in the process of buying a new MBP(MacBook Pro), and i need to know a few things, iam not sure witch one to buy, since i dont have a money limit, but wouldn't like to overspend for my needs, so it would need to be able to run:
autoCAD either the Mac version or the windows one(prefer the mac one, so i dont need to run bootcamp), mostly 2D electrical plans and some 3D fun, the 3D rendering times don't really count
Photoshop: nothing special here just like to play with it a bit
Rapid weaver: same as above
World of Warcraft: play WoW with decent settings a bit above the minimum, so i can distinguis horde from alliance xD
then iPhoto,iTunes, office and mail witch it wont be a problem
and the laptop would be connected to a 25,5" HP 1920x1200 screen and in the future to a 27"/30" monitor,

so my problems now are the 13" for portability witch i like or if the 15" is needed for the specs, all will be with 128GB SSD, HR screen, and will be upgraded to 8GB of ram(myself)

 

[travershartston]

i would recommend the Mac Book Pro i5 300GB HD 13in (you might think the 13in is too small but trust me its not). i have one with those specs and its awesome, i do lots of audio editing and i play games with high res but they all work fine. but getting a MBP with less than 4GB of RAM or less than 250GB on the HD is a waste of time and money, you might think that 128GB is enough but trust me its not. i have 300GB for my internal HD and i have a 2TB external HD and ive used up just about all of that so dont skimp on the HD or the RAM.

 

[Fernandes]

i would recommend the Mac Book Pro i5 300GB HD 13in (you might think the 13in is too small but trust me its not). i have one with those specs and its awesome, i do lots of audio editing and i play games with high res but they all work fine. but getting a MBP with less than 4GB of RAM or less than 250GB on the HD is a waste of time and money, you might think that 128GB is enough but trust me its not. i have 300GB for my internal HD and i have a 2TB external HD and ive used up just about all of that so dont skimp on the HD or the RAM.

well HD room is not demanding since i have all my files in my time capsule(where i have my main music library) and dropbox, and the autocad files are realy small, so the HD room wont be a problem

 

[ender land]

I'd proably recommend the 15" if you are planning on doing a lot of work with the 2D ee programs.

In my experience, those sorts of programs have a lot of screen real estate consumed by menus and buttons which really might get annoying.

If you are going to do almost all your work on the 1920x1200 external monitor this is much less an issue

 

[Fernandes]

I'd proably recommend the 15" if you are planning on doing a lot of work with the 2D ee programs.

In my experience, those sorts of programs have a lot of screen real estate consumed by menus and buttons which really might get annoying.

If you are going to do almost all your work on the 1920x1200 external monitor this is much less an issue

80% external monitor 20% or less in the laptop monitor i just want to know wich specs are needed for the things i wanna do

 

[Laz191]

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I would recommend the 15inch as turbo boost would be very helpful for the 3d rendering and the Amd raedon will kick in, the 17in would only be great becauase the screen is bigger but you already have a monitor so thats not a problem.

 

[Fernandes]

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I would recommend the 15inch as turbo boost would be very helpful for the 3d rendering and the Amd raedon will kick in, the 17in would only be great becauase the screen is bigger but you already have a monitor so thats not a problem.

iam trying to go away from the 17" doe to size and the specs are the same as the high end 15" it wouldnt make sense for my needs

 

[Athonline]

Hello everyone, iam in the process of buying a new MBP(MacBook Pro), and i need to know a few things, iam not sure witch one to buy, since i dont have a money limit, but wouldn't like to overspend for my needs, so it would need to be able to run:
autoCAD either the Mac version or the windows one(prefer the mac one, so i dont need to run bootcamp), mostly 2D electrical plans and some 3D fun, the 3D rendering times don't really count
Photoshop: nothing special here just like to play with it a bit
Rapid weaver: same as above
World of Warcraft: play WoW with decent settings a bit above the minimum, so i can distinguis horde from alliance xD
then iPhoto,iTunes, office and mail witch it wont be a problem
and the laptop would be connected to a 25,5" HP 1920x1200 screen and in the future to a 27"/30" monitor,

so my problems now are the 13" for portability witch i like or if the 15" is needed for the specs, all will be with 128GB SSD, HR screen, and will be upgraded to 8GB of ram(myself)

I am not a Macbook Pro owner yet, however here are my 2 cents:
I got a friend with a 13inch MBP 2010 version, she runs Autocad (studying Civil Engin.) without any problems. Last time I watched her using it, everything was as smooth as things could get.
As for WoW I did a small search online and there are users who manage to play WoW on Macbook Air! My best bet MBP 13inch will be fine, if you low the settings to Good instead of High.
I bored a Macbook Air from an army officer, when I was shooting photos for Cypriot army in a training excersise and used Photoshop. I was amazed by the little machine so much that now I am in a proccess of getting a MBP.
As you can see both laptops are able to do the things you stated, however I find 15inch a better choice-perfomance-future proof. Plus it will have bigger resale value, if you want to upgrade to 2012 MBP line.

 

[Fernandes]

btw just remembered will be using math labs too, dont know if that makes much of a diference

 

[keantan]

As an electrical engineering student myself I can recommend that the 15" is the better option. The screen when you are doing matlab/3D work on the go will make things much easier. I use a 17" personally but I used to have a 15" HR and that was great. I feel that a 13" may choke with AutoCAD especially if your doing more complex designs and if your coding/writing reports the bigger screen is much friendlier to the eyes.

Just my 0.02 cents