Best size laptop for engineering major

J1772protocol
Sun, 29 Sep 2013 01:26:00 +0000

First off, I’m going to college in a year (in my senior year of high school right now), and am not going to buy anything immediately, so specific models aren’t a concern. (I can decide those easily enough myself when I need to. Besides, I’m interested in the Haswell Thinkpads and what the rMBP update will bring, and none of those have been released yet.) That said, I might by a new laptop before I go to college anyway. (If only because my desktop will probably die at some point - I’ve had issues with the traces on the motherboard before - and I’m not sure if I want to buy a new motherboard for something I’m about to replace even if it’s relatively cheap.)

So, the question is - for those of you in engineering majors, what’s the best size of laptop to get? I generally like 13-14" for weight and general usage (I have an 11" netbook, and that’s too small), and feel that 15" is a bit on the large and bulky side. On the other hand, I can also get a higher screen res screen on a 15" laptop without looking at minuscule text. (Note that I’m talking about 1080p or better on 15" - 1366x768 is not an option on any laptop here, end of story.) I can deal with 1920x1080 on a 13" laptop, but it’s a bit smaller than I’d like without DPI scaling. (1600x900 or equivalent with scaling is best.)

Finally, what do you guys feel about Macs? (Particularly the rMBPs. I will note that the non-native scaling options are blurrier than I remember though, and 2:1 doesn’t offer enough space for me - though I’m hopeful that they’ll increase it when they update those.) I realize that they’re not necessarily the best for engineering software, and the hardware is more limited (the limited hardware set is my main concern actually), but I’m fed up with the crap Microsoft’s been pulling lately. Linux doesn’t look like the best of options either. (particularly with high-DPI displays)