Mac vs PC for premed (UVA) bio, chem, compsci

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Blackjack7

Blackjack7

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I don't know if specific college info matters, but I'll be attending UVA next year, and want to buy a laptop for it. I want a good quality thing that'll last me a while, which ends up being $1200 +/- $100 regardless of maker/OS I think. (5th gen i5, 8gb, 256gb) Although I've used PC mostly, I don't have a particular preference for OS, and can use both equally well (fresh start anyway in terms of compsci programming).

My interests lie in Bio, Chem, Compsci. My major(s) would probably be in those. Since I'm not engineering or graphics design, I assume I don't need a super high-spec laptop.

Is there anything you guys would recommend?
 
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Mac book pro. Mine is still running strong 5+ years later. Never had a single problem.

Contrasted with my brother who went through 2 non-mac laptops in that time.. Granted, Im sure a high end PC is just as good.
 
If you are interested in computer science then I would recommend a Mac. Macs are typically longer lasting than PCs and OSX is a *nix environment which makes it highly amenable as a development environment for all applications. I work in a computational and experimental laboratory and everyone uses OSX. I have a PC desktop for gaming.

Generally coding is done in one of three ways:

1) On a PC making everyone around you cringe when you have to use putty every time to SSH, load up a virtual machine to do anything or are unable to build something directly from the command line.

2) On OSX because you are too lazy / busy to learn how to use Linux well.

3) On Linux because you want to have nerd cred.

My roommate had an Asus Ultrabook. Around the same price as my macbook (a little more expensive, I think) and she had it for one less year than me. My macbook is going strong for the third year and she has already had to replace that Ultrabook because of hardware problems.

My suggestion? 13-15in MBP with Retina display, worth every penny.
 
MrBen14 said:
Mac book pro. Mine is still running strong 5+ years later. Never had a single problem.

Contrasted with my brother who went through 2 non-mac laptops in that time.. Granted, Im sure a high end PC is just as good.
Click to expand...
On that...take care of your mac! And buy applecare! I've had mine for just over 4 years and mine is now getting to the non-operable stage. Never had a regret about buying it though.
 
OP, I also like the my laptop is synced with my iphone and my ipad.. I just always feel connected. If you dont have an iphone then you probably wouldnt care as much lol.
 
I also purchased an ipad and found it to be overbearing. Apple raised to the power of three can become boring, through a little android in there!
 
Lucca said:
If you are interested in computer science then I would recommend a Mac. Macs are typically longer lasting than PCs and OSX is a *nix environment which makes it highly amenable as a development environment for all applications. I work in a computational and experimental laboratory and everyone uses OSX. I have a PC desktop for gaming.

Generally coding is done in one of three ways:

1) On a PC making everyone around you cringe when you have to use putty every time to SSH, load up a virtual machine to do anything or are unable to build something directly from the command line.

2) On OSX because you are too lazy / busy to learn how to use Linux well.

3) On Linux because you want to have nerd cred.

My roommate had an Asus Ultrabook. Around the same price as my macbook (a little more expensive, I think) and she had it for one less year than me. My macbook is going strong for the third year and she has already had to replace that Ultrabook because of hardware problems.

My suggestion? 13-15in MBP with Retina display, worth every penny.
Click to expand...
what kind of coding are you doing? 😵

also, I had an asus that lasted 5 years and my lenovo is finishing its 4th year strong...I've had no problems with PCs in computer science and it's worked excellently.
 
I've had good luck running Linux on both Mac and PC, so no problem.

Assuming I do go Apple though, (which seems to be the majority's recommendation) Air vs Pro?
I do want 13inch, 8gig, 256gig, wich ends up being around the same price (student).
However, Pro also has a lot of CPU's and IDK which to choose!
 
Blackjack7 said:
I've had good luck running Linux on both Mac and PC, so no problem.

Assuming I do go Apple though, (which seems to be the majority's recommendation) Air vs Pro?
I do want 13inch, 8gig, 256gig, wich ends up being around the same price (student).
However, Pro also has a lot of CPU's and IDK which to choose!
Click to expand...
PRO ALWAYS PRO
 
genobyte said:
what kind of coding are you doing? 😵

also, I had an asus that lasted 5 years and my lenovo is finishing its 4th year strong...I've had no problems with PCs in computer science and it's worked excellently.
Click to expand...

Computational simulations often have to be performed on the campus super computers so a lot of the work I do I do while SSH'd into the super computer shells (linux) and generally university clusters all operate on linux.

Also a lot of the tools I use were written expressly for OSX or Linux use so a PC user would have to install and run a virtual machine in order to compile those tools and use them on their machine or SSH into a cluster and install the tools on the cluster. The PC console is also awful for installing tools from the command line while on a *nix terminal it's really, really easy.


I have an Air and I would go Pro. The new Macbook is another option now but it is just worse in every category compared to the Pro at that price point imho.
 
I'd go with Mac. I've had mine for 6 years and it's still running strong
 
There are certain PC laptops that compare favorably to the MacBook in terms of specs. Then there are others that compare favorably to MacBook in construction. There are even fewer that compare favorably to MacBook with battery life. However, there doesn't seem to be a PC laptop that gets all of these right like the MacBook does. That, along with longevity of Apple products, is reason enough to buy one.

I say this as I type on a HP Pavilion dm4 14" Entertainment Notebook that has given me plenty of problems. It was $650 with 8 GB RAM and 640 GB HDD and an i5 processor. My hard drive went out a year ago (less than two years from the purchase date), so I bought a 7200 RPM 1TB HDD. My battery then wouldn't hold a charge for more than 30 minutes, so I had to buy a new one. Even this one struggles with more than 1.5 hours. And I've had to replace my screen. This all comes out to about $200 extra through replacing parts. While it's nice to actually be able to replace these by myself, I think just forking over the $1,200 for a MacBook would have helped me sleep better.

I'd go with the 13" MacBook Pro, 8 GB RAM, 256 SSD, and the 2.9 GHz i5 w/ turbo up to 3.3 GHz. Remember to use your college to get you a $100 discount as well. Should run about $1,499 after that.

If you have $2,000 to spend, then go with the 15". Nothing like having an unnecessary amount of RAM and a kick butt processor.
 
Look into product refresh cycles to get the latest version or a cheaper version of last year's model.

Also, don't underestimate the weight factor. Consider a Surface Pro 4 when it comes out (or even the SP3 now). And no matter what you get, you should probably get a monitor at your dorm desk if you're coding.
 
I second the MacBook Pro. If you want to avoid sales tax, I Would buy a new one off eBay.
 
Macbook Air. You don't need the CD drive, and if you do, just get a cheap external one to keep at home. I've said it on here before, once you go Mac, you never go back.
 
PC all the way. I run Linux in a VMWare virtual machine set up, and ease of coding and package installation on Linux blows Mac away. PC also gives you greater flexibility in software compatibility, e.g. if you game at all Windows is better, hands-down.
 
Thanks everybody!!!

BTW, is Apple care worth the cost? $180 or so for 13 inch.

(edited first sentance of original post that was a bit misleading)
 
eishirukofuko said:
I think that the brand of a computer always significantly affects its performance, but I can not even advise you something specific, because each of the manufacturers is good in its own way.
Click to expand...
This thread is 5 years old. This person is likely in residency now.
 
Blackjack7 said:
Thanks everybody!!!

BTW, is Apple care worth the cost? $180 or so for 13 inch.

(edited first sentance of original post that was a bit misleading)
Click to expand...
Yes! If anything happens to your Mac, you can ask them to fix it for free. Hell I asked them to replace my battery 3 years later and they ended up giving me a new laptop which was pretty great. Disclaimer, my laptop was fine, just wanted the free battery lol
 
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