laptop for radiology residency

[AlenS]

I'm starting my radiology residency soon.. Should I get a super good laptop? Or would a mediocre laptop with an HD quality screen do it.

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[DrBowtie]

I'm starting my radiology residency soon.. Should I get a super good laptop? Or would a mediocre laptop with an HD quality screen do it.

Get whatever. You won't be doing anything requiring diagnostic level monitors on your laptop.

 

[Dr.Hive]

Hi, I was wondering if you could help me figure out which laptop its best for my purposes.

Dell XPS 13 i5(7 gen) 8gb ram, 256 gb ssd, biometrics keyboard, 1 year support + accident coverage + McAffe + office personal 365 w 1 TB cloud. Apple Macbook i5(7 gen) 8gb ram 256 ssd. With this specs they both cost the same.

The setting: Radiology residency, 4 years of 84 hours work weeks, 1-2 night shifts a week, reading papers on a daily basis, watching CT, MRI, and X-rays, creating word, excel and power point documents on a pretty much daily basis. Working on collaboration projects w other residents. And general email, web browsing and streaming lectures or youtube tutorials. NO GAMING, NO VIDEO EDITING, NO PHOTO EDITING, LITTLE TO NO TRAVEL.

My current gear its a MacBookPro late 2011 13' been using it all through med school, last week it took 12 min to start and open a power point presentation it has done its fare share.

Ideas? Thanks in advance guys, special shout out to other medical residents who might use this models how've been for you?

Cons of dell: getting used to the new OS.
Cons of mac: 1 PORT?!

 

[Cognovi]

4 years of 84 hours work weeks

What?!

 

[GoPelicans]

The setting: Radiology residency, 4 years of 84 hours work weeks, 1-2 night shifts a week, reading papers on a daily basis, watching CT, MRI, and X-rays, creating word, excel and power point documents on a pretty much daily basis. Working on collaboration projects w other residents. And general email, web browsing and streaming lectures or youtube tutorials. NO GAMING, NO VIDEO EDITING, NO PHOTO EDITING, LITTLE TO NO TRAVEL.

you sound fun

 

[recycledpaper]

Hi, I was wondering if you could help me figure out which laptop its best for my purposes.

Dell XPS 13 i5(7 gen) 8gb ram, 256 gb ssd, biometrics keyboard, 1 year support + accident coverage + McAffe + office personal 365 w 1 TB cloud. Apple Macbook i5(7 gen) 8gb ram 256 ssd. With this specs they both cost the same.

The setting: Radiology residency, 4 years of 84 hours work weeks, 1-2 night shifts a week, reading papers on a daily basis, watching CT, MRI, and X-rays, creating word, excel and power point documents on a pretty much daily basis. Working on collaboration projects w other residents. And general email, web browsing and streaming lectures or youtube tutorials. NO GAMING, NO VIDEO EDITING, NO PHOTO EDITING, LITTLE TO NO TRAVEL.

My current gear its a MacBookPro late 2011 13' been using it all through med school, last week it took 12 min to start and open a power point presentation it has done its fare share.

Ideas? Thanks in advance guys, special shout out to other medical residents who might use this models how've been for you?

Cons of dell: getting used to the new OS.
Cons of mac: 1 PORT?!

What program are you in? So I can avoid going there.

 

[meister]

I got a cheap touch screen and it did everything I asked of it. Majority seems to have Apple stuff anymore.

 

[Naijaba]

1. If you go with Windows: The best DICOM viewer on Windows is RadiAnt (RadiAnt DICOM Viewer). RadiAnt loads images unbelievably fast, likely due to Windows Explorer integration. It's always running in the background, though you can turn this feature off.

2. If you go with Mac OS: OsiriX is the best radiology software, period. It's a complete PACS, viewer and 3D modeler that is user-friendly. It can even do amazing things like exporting a DICOM to STL for viewing in augmented/virtual reality. Nothing really comes close to how easy OsiriX makes tasks that are notoriously annoying (viewing the DICOM header, flipping horizontal or vertical axis, surface rendering, volumetric rendering, etc.). Moreover, OsiriX is fully 3D-accelerated, which means if you buy a MacBook with a dedicated GPU your 3D reconstructions will be smooth as butter.

3. If you go with Linux: There are a myriad of tools, but none in particular is as stand-out as RadiAnt and OsiriX. The main benefit (IMHO) of Linux is the ability to train machine learning models. There are innumerable online tutorials for doing so with Ubuntu.

The laptop I recommend is...the one I own. I went into detail about this on another thread:

I'd recommend getting the 2015 15" MacBook Pro with R9 M370X GPU; the exact model I have. A little known fact about this model is that it supports 5K using both of its DisplayPorts at the same time; Apple is advertising its 2016 models as the first laptops to support 5K, which isn't true. You can't use Apple's LG 5K monitor because they purposefully designed it only to work with the 2016 MacBook Pro, but you can use the Dell UP2715K with the 2015 MacBook Pro. You could buy a top-of-the-line 2015 MacBook Pro on Craigslist for $1700-$2000 (no tax!). Bottom-line: Get the 15" for the GPU and the screen size, they are both well worth it.

Note that MacBooks have AMD GPUs...so you can't use Nvidia CUDA if you plan on doing machine learning.

My #1 complaint about my MacBook is the fact that it has an AMD GPU, but this is just for my interests. I have a desktop with an Nvidia GeForce so it handles the machine learning CUDA tasks.

 

[tco]

Highly recommend XPS 13. Go without the touch screen...That just sucks your battery life and it's pointless if you have a mouse. This laptop with SSD and i5 can be had for around $800 (just watch slickdeals). Probably the best work-related purchase I've made.

 

[GoPelicans]

Highly recommend XPS 13. Go without the touch screen...That just sucks your battery life and it's pointless if you have a mouse. This laptop with SSD and i5 can be had for around $800 (just watch slickdeals). Probably the best work-related purchase I've made.

Do you ever find the lack of 'border' aroudn the screen annoying?

 

[tco]

Do you ever find the lack of 'border' aroudn the screen annoying?

No. I like it. The infinity edge display makes it seem much bigger than its size feels. Especially helpful on flights.

 

[DrfluffyMD]

What program are you in? So I can avoid going there.

Sounds like he's describing a very low tier program in a small hospital with few residents.

In general, good radiology programs are extremely cush due to size of the program. You don't need to step into the reading room at all as a 4th year at UCSF if you are doing a research tract.

Meanwhile, bad programs have a few reisdents, many of whom leave half way. Attendings abuse resident for night coverage, and you have the 84 hour work week you see above.

A top program outside of wash u will not work u more than 40 hrs a week.

 

[Cognovi]

A top program outside of wash u will not work u more than 40 hrs a week.

I think 50 is typical.

 

[deleted103644]

Get the most portable reasonably powered laptop you can (e.g. Apple MacBook), and get a nice monitor for additional screen real estate at home.

Even if you're as hardcore as @Naijaba, you can always get a powerful desktop and control it remotely using a portable Mac laptop (or even your phone). There are lots of options for this, easiest for the less tech savvy is probably chrome Remote Desktop (works in all OSes), but there are many other options.

Essentially every laptop can handle the basics now, most import quality is portability.

 

[speedyxx626]

Get the most portable reasonably powered laptop you can (e.g. Apple MacBook), and get a nice monitor for additional screen real estate at home.

Even if you're as hardcore as @Naijaba, you can always get a powerful desktop and control it remotely using a portable Mac laptop (or even your phone). There are lots of options for this, easiest for the less tech savvy is probably chrome Remote Desktop (works in all OSes), but there are many other options.

Essentially every laptop can handle the basics now, most import quality is portability.

Why have I never thought of doing this...thanks for posting the idea

 

[Naijaba]

Get the most portable reasonably powered laptop you can (e.g. Apple MacBook), and get a nice monitor for additional screen real estate at home.

Even if you're as hardcore as @Naijaba, you can always get a powerful desktop and control it remotely using a portable Mac laptop (or even your phone). There are lots of options for this, easiest for the less tech savvy is probably chrome Remote Desktop (works in all OSes), but there are many other options.

Essentially every laptop can handle the basics now, most import quality is portability.

I have a Ryzen desktop with 32 GB of RAM and a 8 SSD's RAID'ed together. It's pretty fast. My video card is a lame GTX 960*, but it's good enough to train basic models. I use EC2 to train the real ones once I'm satisfied with the local results.

*I'm actually waiting to hear back from Nvidia's GPU grant program. If they turn me down, I'll just buy a 1080 Ti.

 

[tco]

Sounds like he's describing a very low tier program in a small hospital with few residents.

In general, good radiology programs are extremely cush due to size of the program. You don't need to step into the reading room at all as a 4th year at UCSF if you are doing a research tract.

Meanwhile, bad programs have a few reisdents, many of whom leave half way. Attendings abuse resident for night coverage, and you have the 84 hour work week you see above.

A top program outside of wash u will not work u more than 40 hrs a week.

Where the heck are you that you get such a skewed perception of reality?

 

[DrfluffyMD]

Where the heck are you that you get such a skewed perception of reality?

Oh you know, just a radiology resident who have spoke with at least 20 people on the interview trail about their work load and gained a "skewed prospective". Where the heck are you then?

Why don't you name a program considered above low tier university caliber or one with an actual academic department where residents work over 70 hours a week on diagnostic rotation?

 

[Rads4lyfe]

Oh you know, just a radiology resident who have spoke with at least 20 people on the interview trail about their work load and gained a "skewed prospective". Where the heck are you then?

Why don't you name a program considered above low tier university caliber or one with an actual academic department where residents work over 70 hours a week on diagnostic rotation?

I think on average I work 50 hours a week, and I'm at a large academic residency(n=1). I feel bad for those medicine/surgery people slaving away at 80+ hours a week.

I second dell xps 13. Was worth every penny.

 

[tco]

Oh you know, just a radiology resident who have spoke with at least 20 people on the interview trail about their work load and gained a "skewed prospective". Where the heck are you then?

Why don't you name a program considered above low tier university caliber or one with an actual academic department where residents work over 70 hours a week on diagnostic rotation?

You went from "not work(ing) more than 40 hours per week" to "over 70 hours per week" in your next post. There's a huge range between your hyperbole filled hours, and most residencies fit within that range.

No need to be so vitriolic. You're wrong. It's okay. It happens.

I think on average I work 50 hours a week, and I'm at a large academic residency(n=1)

Make that n=2.

 

[DrfluffyMD]

You went from "not work(ing) more than 40 hours per week" to "over 70 hours per week" in your next post. There's a huge range between your hyperbole filled hours, and most residencies fit within that range.

No need to be so vitriolic. You're wrong. It's okay. It happens.



Make that n=2.

Fine, I misspoke. More like 50 hours if calls are factored in. Nothing like 80 hours. No need to be vitriolic.

 

[Rads312]

I'm in a major city and friends with residents at most other hospitals in the city. Including the academic center, I think just about everyone works 50-60 hours after R1 year, with a relatively hard R2 year and chill R3/R4 years.

we are a busy , busy level 1 community hospital with few residents...I'm averaging 70ish hours this year with calls factored in usually....It's awful but last year I was in the 40's, the rest of residency after this year will rarely break 50 hours a week. Can not imagine 80 hours consistently.