A Mac for an Engineering Undergraduate Student?

I have been strongly considering buying a refreshed MacBook Pro (13") this summer (whenever they eventually come out) for college where I will start my freshman year as a Computer Science and Engineering student. Having never used a Mac before, I have been reading up on them a fair amount the past month or so, and I am a bit concerned about the mixed reviews I keep seeing in regards to Engineering.

I understand that a few programs (like autoCAD) may not be available for Mac, but I intend to BootCamp Windows XP or 7 on my MBP, and from what I have seen, nearly all other programs that I would need are available for OSx. I can't figure out why for every person that talks about how they love their Mac and have no problems, there is another person who says that any engineer with a Mac is an embarrassment and that engineers should strictly avoid it.

I plan to talk to my university soon about what they recommend, but in the meantime I would appreciate any opinions about the viability of a Macbook Pro for Computer Science and Engineering. I realize this is the Apple board and that responses may be a bit biased, but at least I should get some firsthand feedback.

 

Let me just put this forward: there is nothing technical that is stopping a MacBook from being a good engineering notebook (yes, Mac OS X at times, but as you mentioned, you can and would have used Boot Camp for Windows).

I think what the people are talking about is more the "perception" of carrying a Mac as an engineer. Its the idea that some believe only Thinkpads and Dells should be in corporate boardrooms, and only Macs should be in a design studio; in the same sense, they are saying an engineer carrying a Mac would be snickered at (whether justified or not). But its just a perception value, and not a technical value: a Dell PC nowadays can run nearly all the design software that a Mac can, and a pink notebook in technical terms is no different from a black Thinkpad in a corporate boardroom. Its just perception .

And that's what I mean, there is no reason why a Dell can't exist in a design studio and a pink notebook can't exist in a corporate boardroom, technology wise, but what people are talking about are others' perceptions of it. So there is nothing wrong with a engineer carrying a Mac (or a businessman carrying a pink notebook!).

 

your big thing to look at is how intensive the CAD and rendering applications you will be using. I know in my wifes work ( CAD/CAM and CnC work ) her MBP was unsuitable for her because of:

A: Bootcamped into windows the extra battery life the MBP gave her was nullified.

B: rendering applications that use GPU accelleration were hidiously slow with the 9400m/9600. if you use ACAD 10 and want to do extensive 3D rendering then something like a fireGL or Quadro GPU will be much faster and smoother.

C: when stressing the unit in CAD ( 90% + CPU/GPU usage ) for exteneded periods of time caused alot of overheating no matter how much undervolting I did to it. and hundreds of hours of high temp max load caused 2 motherboard failures. In which Apple would NOT warranty the second board because of " extenuating circumstances and stress to the system "

if you will just be doing light work and dont mind the huge hit in battery life the MBP is usable but if you WILL be pushing it hard or intend to in the next couple years seriously concider a proper workstation machine.

 

Thanks for your replies. I am visiting again with my university on Friday, so I will try to ask how intensive my CAD use will be. From my understanding, most of what I will need to do would take place in computer labs anyway, so that may not be a huge issue.

Also, we obviously don't know the exact specs for the (possibly imminent) refresh, but would the supposed upgrades at least partially help with the GPU or overheating issues? (Or would the new i3/5/7 chips make overheating worse? I guess we will have to wait and see) I know i will be taking a couple intensive engineering courses my first year, but then I will delve more towards the Computer Science side, which I assume will require a bit less on the hardware side of things.

I know this isn't the right forum for this, but do you have any alternative suggestions to a new MBP (with a lower price and light gaming ability)? I would appreciate any suggestions.

 

I will amplify what crazycanuk said. It all depends how much AutoCad or other engineering softwares you will be using.

I am doing Civil Engineering right now ( 30 days to go for Graduation! yay ) and we use a lot of AutoCad especially in the Senior year. Apart from AutoCad, I use some geotechnical, piling, water system analyzing softwares.

My suggestion would be to check with the instructors as to what software you might be using to see if MacBook would be right for you. I will say, if possible get a desktop with atleast 24" LCD monitor and you will be good to go.

 

well said.

there are reasons that go beyond "perception", and the above is an example of it.

 

So your a computer engineer? I'm also a computer engineer, in my classes I've noticed that a lot of computer scientist use macs (computer science is more software related), while computer engineers tend to use Asus/Acer, as they are more hardware knowledgeable. I also own a 13inch macbook, but use it as a portable computer to my 17inch clevo, which runs windows and all my software. A mac is very popular on a lot of campuses and is a well rounded computer, but you most likely will have software compatibility issues is some programs with a mac as your only computer.

If your starting school next fall, definitely wait for the macbook refresh, and get a better idea of what software you will need to run. I know a lot of people in my degree that use macs and are fine using the software needed, or are fine using the labs. But I'd definitely wait for the macbooks to be updated.

 

I was wondering, how do non GL/CAD optimized cards do with rendering and CAD programs? Does it still do a good job?

 

I have several friends with Macs in engineering. I almost bought one myself, went for a business notebook with workstation graphics card instead.

Really though there is nothing wrong with a Mac for an engineering student other than the fact that you will have to open a VM or bootcamp into windows for many windows specific applications CAD apps aside, there are also computational softwares such as Matlab and Maple.

Personally I'd stick with a PC for the sake of convenience.

High five Civil engineering ftw!

 

worked fine for me so far.

windows is a requirement for some applications / programs / classes.

os x works fine usually.

 

A quick search seems to indicate that both matlab and maple are available for mac, but perhaps these aren't the right versions. I will definitely wait for the refresh for news, but in the meantime, what PCs do you recommend? I looked at the new Lenovo Ideapads but I am a bit concerned with their heating issues. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

 

Depends on what you are doing. in many cases they will work not bad but for some renders and applications ... NOT so good, you will really need to know what software you will be using.

http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk_r13/help/base/install/mac/inst_mac.html

from Matlab

I asked a couple of structural engineers about running matlab on OSX and they said it was a monumental pain and buggy. Run it through windows until mathworks rewrites it alot more. neither had any experience with Maple on Mac but figured it would be similar and/or possibly buggy due to rumors they had heard but that is third hand information.

maplesoft does say the 13.02 update supports snow leopard though so you will need to find someone more knowledgable. but since maple is commonly used with matlab ... somewhat a bit of a dillemma

toss a post in the WNSIB forum you will get lots of good answers. Lenovo and Dull umm yes Dell both make great workstation machines and the AW and Clevo's can make excellent render machines too.

 

Im doing a degree in computer Science & Engineering. My mac is just right for my tasks. One thing i like is that i dont get requests from friends to give them my downloaded open source softwares coz i download the mac version and they have pc's (Yeah i'm lazy to burn disks). One thing i would like to mention is that the netbeans c++ compiler is useless. The codes i write are compilable on visual studio but give me error messages on netbeans.. Apart from that, all other softwares run fine on my mac. Web development is quite cool on os x. Using the multitouch to flick through windows and check if the codes are doing their jobs fine on a web browser. The only thing i'm missing is a bigger hard drive, but i cant afford one atm.

 

While Matlab, Maple, and whatever other engineering software you use may be mac compatible, you need to ensure that your school has student licenses for the mac versions.

Also, to my knowledge, hardcore engineering software like ANSYS do not support mac.

 

Shardin do you want me to move this to the what notebook should I buy section of the forum?

 

look at other laptops.. but keep in mind the Mac will work fine... wait for the refresh, unless it doesn't come before you have to buy.... even other machines your looking at could be upgraded or new versions come out before you buy, so I wouldn't get my heart set on anything a few months before buying... maybe a couple of weeks before.

people who "fry" their motherboards and stopped using Macs was back on Geforce 8600 Macbook Pros, which were known defective. This was on all 8600s on many laptop brands, not just Macs.

 

Don't get a Mac if you won't be using OSX. As others have stated, many of the goods things about the MBP (such as battery life and the touchpad) are nullified under windows. Pretty much all CADing software is Windows exclusive so if this laptop is going to be primarily a "work" computer, I think other options would suit your needs better.

 

I am currently a Chemical Engineering student (4th year but dual minors or forcing it to 5 ) anyhow, I love my Mac but for my major, I can't aford (and am not given) any of the programs I need so most of my assignments in Aspen or something like that is done in the lap. I just prefer to have a Mac cause in my experience it takes less work to keep it up and is one less thing for me to worry about.

A few of my chem engr profs use Macs exclusively and have no problem with Matlab and the like on them. I was taught Matlab on a Mac actually lol.

Moral of the story, I am not sure about your major but with mine, there isn't a way to get the programs I need for personal use so what computer I carry really doesn't matter lol.

 

EE here, the SPICE stuff we use requires Windows. I don't own a Mac personally but I have two friends who do:

One struggled to get Parallels working so he ended up Bootcamping Vista onto it, and still finds it a pain to have two operating systems--one to socialize and one to work with.

The other one liked Windows 7 so much he overwrote his OSX partition with it and has been happy ever since. A few fellow EE's poke at him for having such an expensive Windows laptop. He says it wasn't worth the price but he's just happy to have laptop.

So there are my friends' stories. What Chris27 said is also valuable.

 

You can move it if you like. It started out as a question about the MBP, but I guess it's a bit larger in scope now.

I appreciate the feedback, and I think the deciding factor will be what Ohio State recommends. My major isn't built around autoCAD, it will just play a role in a class or two I believe. I will just have to see how much time I will spend with those types of programs.

 

It's really not that big of a deal either way. I'd still vote a windows machine if you are doing engineering. Why deal with the hassle of multiple operating systems?

Matlab works great on the mac. I run the latest version regularly, it works fine. It is cross platform software and works the same across operating systems.

 

It depends on the engineering field.
TBH, to be on the safe side I would get a PC.
For software engineering, it's really no problem between Mac or PC, but other fields requiring extensive CAD or any other "industry" standard programs, etc you should definately get a PC to be on the safe side.

May I recommend the Lenovo W5 or W7 series XD

 

actually the 17" unit my wife cooked both boards in, wasnt the 8600 problem it was the current refresh and she cooked the CPU and power regulators BOTH times

 

They work acceptably for certain programs. I used Autodesk Inventor 2009 on my old X1600 Mobility, and it worked passably well. It was choppy at times, but certain worked a lot better than integrated Intel cards (according to my observation of it running on other computers). Now, my FX3700m tears through everything on 2010. There's only one time I get slowdown, and that's when I first open a file, so I'm pointing my finger at my HDD as the bottleneck.

If you're doing CAD and modeling intensive work, I would look into getting a Windows PC. Not just anyone though. It should be one with a workstation graphics card (ATi FireGL/Fire PRO, nVidia Quadro FX). I can tell you right now that you'll only find it primarily in 3 brands: HP, Lenovo, and Dell. Dell has their Precision line for such work, while HP has the EliteBook line (all models that end with the "w" suffix), and Lenovo, the ThinkPad W line.

Now if whatever you do involves more coding, the MBP should work fine, and in fact, may be ideal. The only possible let down is the lack of resolution options, though the fact that the Macs are still 16:10 give them a slight resolution advantage over certain PC bretheren (in fact, for HP/Dell/Lenovo, the only place you'll find 16:10 are either last generation models, or very large 17" models).

 

Thanks for answering my questions. So it all depends on the program....hmmmm.

 

It doesn't matter which program. At some point, you are going to run into something that cannot run on OS X.

Like Sam said a while back, an Apple machine can be a good machine even for engineering. But you have to be prepared to use Windows at some point, probably best to use a VM that you can use from within OS X.

 

I am in my last semester of chemical engineering and I have only met 3 people who use macs. They never had a problem with running matlab but one did use parallels to run windows so she could run aspen and autocad and sometimes excel lol (our spreadsheets get really big sometimes). I would have probably bought a mac if they refreshed back in feb like expected.

 

So you are doing computer science eh? The Mac unix environment is something you should become very familiar with then, especially in using terminal. Being an "engineer" you will probably have to work with circuits and I know CSEs(Computer Science Engineers) use Quartus for that at my school which is available for Linux and Windows I know for sure, but not sure about mac.

Just be prepared to have Windows on your machine for those moments you need it for a particular program. If you go with a Windows machine, I would strongly recommend you install a Linux partition(I strongly recommend Ubuntu) on your computer's hard disk and use that as much as possible for your programming needs, as if your college is actually serious about making you a computer engineer, they will train you well in Linux systems. And in any case Windows is really crap when it comes to doing any REAL software development on it. But this all depends on your school... Hopefully they don't have you working in Visual Studio... Hope this helps.

EDIT: Oh and about MATLAB, I have used it for one course, and when I needed to use it I just sshed(like remoting into a computer, but through the terminal) into a computer lab machine and did my work via the terminal. I was able to get away with this because I didn't need the graphical aspect of the program. Point is you may not even need to boot into Windows as much as you would imagine.

 

well thats odd, never seen it before.. and my 15" and my firends 17" goes hard pressed for games probably over 15 hours a week (sometimes like 40+ on lazy weeks) with fans at constant 6000 rpm for many hours at a stretch, and never have had an issue. Either you were very unlucky to get defective parts both times, or something else was going on, especially if the "power regulator" fried as well, it might have been the root of the problem both times, and not the cooling.

 

Note, this might also mean your friend was lucky...

I've worked on more macs than you have seen... the current batch is not very well built when it comes to heat dissipation.

Current mac laptops are built with "pretty" as a primary purpose with all else as secondary.

A mac will most certainly work provided you are willing to put up with the design sacrifices made and do your own support.

Note, that at this time a mac is not using up-to-date hardware either due to lack of hardware refresh.

All of this doesn't make it non-functional... just LESS functional than high-tech, better cooling design and somehow insanely cheaper PC.

The above is why engineers laugh at mac users... the OS is tolerable, the hardware used to be admirable... its the insane price and the recent emphasis on fashion over function.

 

its not that uncommon, I have cooked a few when you run them at max for 15-20 hours a day with no let down. You have to remember gaming will run at max for awhile then let off for a few minutes or allow more throttling, renders and such normally do not.

the power regulators cooking off were because of internal temps staying above 70C where many capacitors/resistors and regulators start to degrade quickly.

 

^^ This.

Knew someone who had a MacBook Pro for our computer science classes. Ended up wiping it and installing Linux anyway. Linux provides a great dev environment that can be customized down to the bone. Defeats the purpose of buying a Mac if you ask me, OSX is the reason people like it. That and the shiny cover.

I would much rather program in Linux and/or OSX before Windows any day. Only ran into one class where we were forced to use Windows for some assembly language stuff, but even then I just used the computers in the lab. For most other work though, I used my own laptop (non Mac) with Linux on it.

Do what makes you efficient. Software devs don't care what you use, but rather, what you can produce. If you can write great code faster and more elegant on a freakin Acer with Windows, then get that.

 

Oh I'm not the OP. I was talking about my question about non GL/workstation cards. Apparently that depends on the program whether those "regular" cards will do well.

 

I am in almost the same position as you. my major is electrical engineering, Currently i am struggling between thinkpad x200/x201 and Mac pro 13'. I got the same concerns as you. Heating problem when run win7 and software issues. I wanted a macbook pro when I was about to buy my first laptop but ended up with a 16in sony. now I need a portable one as secondary, and really want to buy a mac pro.
If thinking about pc, i say x201 would be a good one, durable, and ultra-light

 

For EE I'd stick with a Thinkpad. Being a software engineering undergrad (That owned Thinkpads for a long time ! ) , I can only find advantages to having a Unix based system that is less hassle but quite capable. I've been through alot of OSes, from Gentoo Linux to Windows 7 and I'm quite pleased with OSX in general.

It is dumbed down if you stick to the GUI, but as soon as you tackle the CLI, it gets powerful really fast.

The only thing I need Windows for is Office and Microsoft tools... Most other apps are cross-platform.

I think strictly from a computer scientist's point a view, dabbling with OSX will be a great learning experience...

Good luck. If anything, the Mac has an awesome resale value so if you get tired of it you can always sell it and get a kickass Thinkpad. ( The X201 series is looking great !)

 

this is coming from a civil/environmental eng undergrad w/ a macbook pro 13:

don't buy macbook pro, get yourself a ssd equiped t201 with 9 cell or t400s with 6 cell + 3 cell battery. ALL software programs that are required by the civil course won't work on os x, you will either have to run parallel, dos box or BC on your macbook, and battery life of macbook running windows is absolutely horrible. bring AC cable with you to school is a mess. plus with PC your can get i5 and i7s, os x do not have to much performance advantage to edge the windows 7 these day, so why bother?

 

I talked to a few engineering students from my future university today, and they told me that they do essentially all of their intensive work in labs that are accessible 24 hours a day. They told me that the autoCAD use will be pretty basic, and that most people spend their time in labs rather than stuffed up in their rooms. They advised that I get whatever notebook that I feel like, because just about anything will work just fine.

Based on this, I am still considering the refresh of the MBP. I will just have to wait and see the specs and price-point when the details are released (whenever that will be). Until then I guess I will just keep looking at upcoming releases and play the waiting game until I make my decision.

Thanks for everyone's input, and please feel free to continue the discussion in order to help myself and others.

 

This is pretty much what I was going to say.

Here's the thing. I'm a Mechanical Engineer graduate student (4 weeks left... yikes), and I have a 13" MacBook (as you can see below). It's been perfectly fine for me. Yes, I have to boot to Windows for MATLAB, but it's not that big of a deal. Bump in for a few hours, go back to OS X, be happy. Simple.

The problems you're going to run into are with software like ANSYS, Pro/E (and Mechanica), Solidworks, SolidEdge, or whatever you guys have to run at your university (we actually use all of the above). But it's not a problem with just the Mac. Any laptop you get in the 13" size range is going to struggle to run complex solid models because they just don't have the graphics power. This is why I originally bought my M90 with the Quadro FX1500M. But then you run into the other issue... screen real estate. Unless you get a 1080p (or 1200p) screen, solid modeling is going to be a pain on a laptop. So I found myself going to the lab all the time to do my work anyway. Especially since ANSYS (which would run fine under Windows on a MacBook Pro btw... our lab still has some leftover Precision 380s with P4s and 512MB of RAM that do just fine) is far too expensive per seat for many universities to even offer copies for students, meaning you'll need to go to a lab for that anyway.

I bought my MacBook for mobile computing/reports/coding (like BASIC and MATLAB), use the labs at school for FEA and solid modeling, and my Dell now sits at home collecting dust most of the time. Yes, it's better than my MacBook at solid modeling, but the MacBook can handle opening a mid-level SolidWorks assembly for a quick view without too much trouble, and any more than that you'll want to just go to the lab and use the big screen anyway. On top of all this... you're going for computer engineering. The amount of solid modeling/FEA you'll have to do in your college career is far less than what I've had to do in the past year, and I've been just fine with my MacBook.

The biggest thing you'll have to worry about is people poking fun at you for having a Mac, because engineers do tend to do that. Why? Because we're efficiency elitists and Macs aren't as "efficient" as PCs hardware-wise. But while all my friends lose time with their PCs crashing and having to reinstall Windows, then reinstall Office and Solidworks and MATLAB and blah blah blah, I've been going along smoothly, efficiently saving time with my MacBook. So I just let it roll off. Everybody has their opinion, but it doesn't make my MacBook any less productive for my uses.

Also... if AutoCAD is going to be your only modeling, you're completely fine. Our AutoCAD lab still had a few P3 computers when I took my AutoCAD class three years ago. AutoCAD will run on pretty much anything for what you're going to be doing with it as a computer engineer.

 

Very well said Paul, I feel the same way!