My First MacBook for College

[richmlow]

Hi avoncuster23,


With regards to specs., here are my thoughts: An i5 or i7 CPU is more than adequate. A quad-core processor will be fine, as most programs (that you will probably be using as a math major) do not make significant use of mult-core processing. RAM is always important and I would recommend a minimum of 8GB. A discrete GPU may be useful if you wish to play graphics-intensive games on your machine.

Here is my current computing platform:

Mac Mini (Mid 2011)
2.5 GHz Intel Core i5
8GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 6630M (256MB VRAM)
OS X 10.10.4

I find the system to be rock-solid. I use it for web-surfing, web design, scientific computing (Mathematica programming), typesetting research articles (LaTeX), movie watching and playing games.

Good luck with your Mac purchase!


richmlow

Hey guys, first post here as I am new to the forums. Anyways, I am looking for a Mac for college. Probably used from 2012 or newer. I am a math major so I am needing at least 8GB of RAM but I don't know where to go as far as i5 vs i7. I will probably be running some intensive programs such as MATLAB and Maple. Any advice you guys can input is much appreciated. Thanks!