Mac? PC? Electrical Engineering?

Question

I'll be attending the University of Cincinnati next year in their electrical engineering program and i recently found out i need to take a quick online course for there next year so i need to get a computer for college now and soon. I've been checking out the Macs alot since they claim to be able to run Microsoft software now and i can get a 13 inch mac book pro with 3 years of warranty, a printer, and an ipod touch for about 1300 bucks straight from apple, but it doesn't have an i3,i5,or i7 processor and i really don't know what all that means (I'm not computer savvy), or a 15 inch mac book pro with all the extras for around 2000 and it has an i5. or should i be looking more into PC even though I've had bad experiences with them crashing and getting viruses, and if so what PC would you recommend?

Answer 1

I'm an EE and I like my Mac especially for writing papers and reports. Microsoft office works fine.



Best of both worlds. You can get a copy of Windows and run bootcamp (included free from Apple) if you need to run PSPICE or some other windows only program and still have a Mac for everything else!



Don't worry too much about the processor, most processors have more than enough horsepower for just about any task in college.

Answer 2

Im also a computer engineer with years of experience in the business. Read on..... If your buying a computer - buy a Windows PC. Why? First: PC's dominate about 92% of the market. Its what the world uses. Apple only has about 4%, followed by Linux. When you ultimately go for a job, which operating system do you think you'll be using? You'll be at a disadvantage if you use a Mac. Second: The hardware technology curve is heavily biased towards PC's. They are completely customizable and upgradeable for astonishing prices. The very best hardware is available for PC's first (Dual Core and Quad Core processors, as well as Nvidia GPU's) Third: Software availability. PC's simply have more availability of software than Apple. Period. Professional and gaming software companies generally write for PC's first and Apple second. You always hear of games being "ported" over to Macs. Fourth: Windows is not nearly as complicated to use as people perceive. I used Macs years ago and simply found them different that Windows machines. Although Vista has issues because it is so new, OS10 was riddled with bugs when it came out. Once the patches were fixed by Apple, it was more acceptable - just like Vista will be. Max OS also gets hit hard by viruses and malware. You only hear about WIndows getting hit by them because the world uses PC's and the "damage" is on a much larger scale. Fifth: Bang for buck. Compare a PC to that of a Mac and see what you actually get for the money. Since PC hardware is not owned by any one company (like Apple), you get fierce competition for your dollar. All the software you get is nothing more than a throw in. The real value comes from the hardware you purchase. Just remember that you will get a lot of opinions on this topic but the fact of the matter is that PCs dominate the world while Apple only has a fraction of it. There is a learning curve to ANY operating system (PC/Mac/Linux) and each will have problems by those who dont know how to use it. Just make sure you do your homework before you buy ANY machine and make sure you do comparisons to maximize your dollar. GL!

Answer 3

I am currently a student of Electrical Engineering and I love my macs. Heck many of my classmates who don't have macs want macs and some have already ditched their crappy windows computers. I have a 1st gen macbook, but I also have a 17" MBP i5 which is most excellent. I use Parallels 5 and thus I run Windows XP and Fedora 13 in VMs and they run really well, thus I have no problem running any software and I don't have to worry about windows trashing my machine. For less demanding windows programs I just run them under CrossOver (basically a paid version of wine), programs like MicroCap run great under crossover, thus I don't even have to start my VM. The programs that I use everyday for school run natively under OS X. These programs include, Mathematica, MATLAB, MacTex 2009 + TeXShop, LaTeXiT, Xcircuit, MacSpice, VectorDesigner, Pixelmator, iWorks (pages, keynote and numbers), Adobe illustrator, . . . etc, plus I can run lots of linux tools to with macports. Although I VM into fedora for FEL (Fedora Electronics Lab), and use windows for MPLab (for programming PIC chips) and for some Keithly tools for the SMUs, but most of the SMUs I can just control via a web browser.



Electrical Engineering is hard enough, why have to fight with windows bull crap everyday :) and yeah I am a long time Windows user, so don't think I am some nut who has been on macs my whole life and has never seen the other side. Although sadly I still get conned into fixing windows problems all the time. Oh one other thing writing code on the mac is soo nice, with xcode or just the terminal.



As for which mac to buy, I have managed just fine with my old macbook but if you can afford a 15" MBP with an i5 then do that, as the i5 is one really amazing processor IMO. Also with 4GB of ram in the base model you shouldn't have much trouble with at least 1 VM running, although I can have all 3 OSs running at the same time if I really want to. But 99% of the time I am just using OS X (although it used to be more like 80% as I used to have to use MPLab almost everyday and Altera's Quartis, but I should mention its possible to program PICs from OS X too, but I tend to choose whichever OS has the best tools for any given job, as I want it to work and be easy).

Answer 4

You are better off with a PC because of the software available for it. I am an Electrical Engineer running Linux right now but sometimes it is necessary to boot Windows to run specific software.



By the way, check out SwitchCAD.



http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/



Windows 7 is much better than the previous versions of Windows. If you keep your antivirus software current (and most schools force you to) and stay away from dubious websites, you will probably be fine.



Back your assignments up to a flash drive anyway!!

Answer 5

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Answer 6

Get a PC with at least a 2GHz processor & at least 2GB of RAM - and use Ubuntu. Windows is a waste of time for your sort of serious stuff.