MacBook pro and computer science studies

Hello,

I am looking to buy a new laptop. I am a computer science major, I'll be on my 4th year in a few months.

I already made a post on the "What should I buy" part of the forum but for Windows computer. I am actually wondering if a Macbook pro 13" wouldn't be the best fit for me.

Why do I need a new laptop?
-I currently have only an old desktop (6 y o) computer with Win 8.1. It runs quite well, I only lack RAM (only 3Go) and I don't really play games anymore.
-A laptop is, I think, mandatory for the rest of my studies. I need to be able to work at the Uni or at my gf's house.

At first, I wanted a quad core i7, dGPU because I never know if I am going to play games in the future and I don't like using dual boot on laptops so the more powerful, the more smoothly a VM could be run but for a linux VM, a MBP should be enough.

What do I do in my CS classes : C/C++, JAVA and maybe a bit of Android programming. My masters degree will be specialized in Cryptography and security so I don't really know if windows is better than OS X for that as we mainly use Linux for our current projects.

I am not going to lie, the aesthetics of the MBP really appeal to me. I am indifferent to windows, I don't know OS X.

So, to sum up a bit :
For computer science stuff (no iOS development of any sort), heavy linux VM usage, is the MBP good or should I go with a pc?

Also, when I am at home, I'll want to plug my laptop to a 22 or 24" screen. Won't the retina display cause problems if I use a 1080p screen?

 

heavy VM work may be an issue on the little Dual Core units, I know it will get hot ( good quads and lots of RAM are highly recommended for VM work ). running external 1080 display is not an issue except for sometimes having a miniDP - DVI or HDMI adaptor fail, but I do find it woks best if you turn off the laptops own display and run external only

a lot of it will depend on what software you are running in your courses. I don't work in Crypto or programming so I am not a lot of help there, however I do know a lot of cryptography does use dGPU and GPGPU or ASIC processing though.

 

Honestly, for that sort of CS work, you could use anything you want. The MBP 13" won't be better than anything else out on the market for your needs, unless you're going to be working in Objective-C or the like (but you say no to that). All of what you're doing can easily be done in Linux (or any OS, really); hell, my whole CS department is nothing but Linux.

Personally though, "I like how it looks" is a pretty poor reason to buy anything, imo. Buy something for its merits (build quality, or hardware specs, or software requirements), not because it's shiny...

 

Thanks for your answers.

Yes, you're right about the looks, it's not a good enough reason but it's a plus as the MBP specs suits me. Though, I've read that the late 2013 retina models have heat issues. Mac OS X seems better than windows for my programming needs from what I've read : you can code without necessarily an IDE with emacs and gcc.

If I am looking at ultrabooks, for the price of a MacBook, I have the same hardware more or less with Windows but I really don't like to work on Windows.

 

The exact same thing can be done on any OS with most any language. I do the exact some thing in Linux with gEdit and pico. Hell, the same can be done in Windows with Notepad or Notepad++, if wanted.

You know you can replace Windows with a Linux install, right? Or, if you like, you can buy laptops pre-loaded with Linux (System76, for example).

 

I know, I use linux on my desktop and I love it for work but I am not keen on linux on laptop. Anyway, my questions are answered about Mac OS X.

Thanks everybody!

 

Don't discount aesthetics. You'll be looking at that thing every day. Buy something you'll enjoy looking at.

Since Mac is Unix under the hood, your need for VMs might be reduced. That's another plus for the Mac, in addition to the aesthetics.

Battery life in Macs is very good too.

Just some things to consider. Good luck on the decision.

 

Pstt

hackintosh :v

 

I'd argue that the display is more important for much the same reason. Asthetics is just a subjective thing, though a terrible display can ruin a computer for a CS type of person, likewise a great display will be awesome for one. You're looking atht display most of the time, you know?

Anyway, battery life isn't much different between OEMs anymore. 6-9 hours is very much possible in a lit of laptops these days, except for obviously short battery life computers like high-end Clevo gamers and the like.

 

Actually I disagree with you on that one. Reason why is because if you grab a laptop that is known to have good battery life chances are that it does NOT have a dedicated card of any sort. If you grab a laptop that seems similiar or identical to the Macbook Specs it doesn't have anywhere close to the same battery. Take for instance the Dell in my sig, I bought that for my little brother to use and it can only get at best 5 hours of battery life. And this is the BEST 15 inch XPS you can get with the 512gb SSD and extended Battery (No 2.5 inch drive). 5 hours is no where close to my 9 hour late 2013 Macbook Pro 15 inch retina.

To put this into perspective for you I can watch an HD Movie on my Macbook Pro and fly from New York City to LAX, and still arrive in LAX with 46% battery life leftover. My brother's dell can't even touch that...

 

Have you tried playing around with the power settings and such? Displays suck a massive amount of power, so lowering the brightness is a big step in increasing battery life (also, make sure the GPU is disabled if you're not using it).

Just my own personal experience to compare to tour's, my W520 (9-cell, 2000M, FHD) battery life maintained a good 8-ish hours per charge on Sandy-Bridge-era tech when it was new, and now 3 years later is it now "only" getting 4-5 hours on the original battery. Display settings are usually set to around 50% brightness and I manually turn off the GPU when I'm not plugged in.

 

Really dont have to do that at all, all I have to do is go to the dell XPS 9530 forums on here and read up battery life and you'll see/read countless posts of getting around 5 hour battery life out of the box some 6 hours. On top of that once those users found out that I had the rare 90 wHR battery (Top Configuration which costs like $2300 and not worth it) and not the 60wHr batteyr they all PM'ed me asking for a trade cause they're trying to get more battery life. I literally got 3 PM's asking for a trade. The display on the XPS however is a massive 3200 x 1800 which trumps the retina display.