We are buying my son a MBP for his first year of college. Do you you think the mid MBP 15" 2.66 is the right choice for Aerospace Engineering. He will have some sort of cad witch I think will have to run on windows. But thats not until next year. I would like this to last him all four years. BTW , this is an awesome forum.
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MBP for Aerospace Engineering
- Thread starter BigOrange
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Is the subject more graphics or numbers based? If it is not very graphics intensive then any Mac/Windows would be fine for him. I knew a couple of aerospace engineers at university and they were not armed with high-powered laptops, let alone Macs, and one was just the type who would have loved an excuse for buying one.
I think that MBP would be excellent for 3 or 4 years of running all the programs he would need. I would just run Windows 7 via Bootcamp for any programs not available for OSX, such as various CAD, FEA and simulation software.
I run the latest CAD and FEA software and get 3 to 4 years of life out of my machines, both PC and Macs no problem.
I run the latest CAD and FEA software and get 3 to 4 years of life out of my machines, both PC and Macs no problem.
For CAD & 3D programs, Bootcamp is highly recommended over VMWare. However, there won't be much improvement going to a 7200 RPM hard drive.
I think the 15" MBP 2.66 is more than enough for aerospace engineering school purposes. i had a 1.33 15" compaq pressario and it was fine for all the CAD/matlab/FEA uses which i used throughout my aerospace undergrad career. I've also seen my peers used the older MBP and macbook air in class. I know they have a free older version of Matlab in mac. I have parallels which is same as VMware and its easier because you dont' have to reboot to go to windows, but its supposedly a little slower at running programs as compared to bootcamp. But i don't really notice the difference, I feel like the programs run faster in my mac then my old pc. LOL
good luck getting licenses for these programs on a personal computer
op: he will be using the labs for most of the work. his personal computer does not need to be able to run cad to be honest
Unless, of course, the school has academic licensing for students' personal machines...
What I would say is that having a top-of-the-line workstation is unnecessary, as the school probably has some computer labs for student use. But to say that 100% of all CAD work would be done in a lab doesn't make sense to me.
What I would say is that having a top-of-the-line workstation is unnecessary, as the school probably has some computer labs for student use. But to say that 100% of all CAD work would be done in a lab doesn't make sense to me.
our school provided academic licensing for personal machines for all programs needed.
and most of CAD work is done not in the labs, but the cad pieces we make are not super sophisticated so you don't need to have a fast computer/alot of ram.