<p>Hi, I’m an incoming freshman at BU and I’m trying to figure out what the best computer would be for a BME student. If anyone has any insight on whether picking the Macbook Pro or the suggested Dell Latitude E6500. With either one, depending on which you consider better, what specs should I get? Let’s pretend money isn’t a huge concern for now. </p>
<p>Also, in the housing questionnaire, it asks for what your top 5 dorms are, and I could use some insight as to which 5 an incoming freshman should put (in preference order would be nice). </p>
<p>And finally (sorry about the length), what would the best meal plan be from your experience? I’ve heard the 14+ and 250 are the best but I’m not sure.</p>
<p>For the computer issue, I really have no insight! Sorry!</p>
<p>But, I can help with the other two. The most popular freshman dorms are Warren, West, & Towers. I suggest you check out the Dorms thread that’s very popular right now. A bunch of us went into detail about all the dorms. I think someone posted the Backdoor BU link too, which outlines each option. Check it out, and then if still have any other specfic questions, throw them out there to us.</p>
<p>I have the 14+ and next year I will most likely choose the 250. Those would definitely be the best two options in my opinion. The good thing is that you can change your meal plan by just going to an office during the first 11 weeks or so of school. Despite this, the 14+ gives you a fair amount of dining points (usable at the GSU, Late Night in the dining halls from 9PM-12AM, delivery Papa John’s/Domino’s) and 14 meals at the dining hall a week. I generally have at least one or two meals leftover per week. They don’t rollover into the next week…which is a perk of having a meal plan like 250. You get some more dining points with 250 too to overcomponsate for having less meals per semester than 14+. I suppose it takes a little more planning though since you obviously could go dining hall meal crazy early on. Chances are you will get semi-sick of dining hall food twice a day by the end of the year though and will embrace your dining points. We have really good dining hall food, but like anywhere, the novelty wears off a bit when you eat it all the time.</p>
<p>You can get either. Your “worst case” is having to run Windows or Linux on the MacBook, either using Parallels or VMWare together with OS X or booting separately under Apple’s BootCamp.</p>