Going to uni. Need a laptop for under £1500

engstrom0304 · 11 Aug 2013 at 21:45

Hey guys,
Going to university to study mechanical engineering. Need a laptop that will run solidworks. (This means windows).

Build quality is of utmost importance to me.

Was maybe thinking of getting a MacBook Pro (probably would wait for haswell model) and installing windows for solidworks? What would you do?

Microwave · 11 Aug 2013 at 21:47

Look into Lenovo if you want build quality.

niko · 14 Aug 2013 at 13:12

ThinkPad t-series. they even have drainage holes to let coffee run out if you spill it

JonJ678 · 14 Aug 2013 at 16:38

If you're off to read mechanical engineering, a laptop is not a great choice. £1500 will get you a netbook (cheap, portable, great battery life, lecture/library friendly) and a desktop that performs well enough to wipe the floor with any £1500 laptop you might choose.

Solidworks means you want a big monitor - 20" is OK, 24" much better. Can't get that from a laptop. Engineering means you'll meet fea/cfd at some point, and you really don't want to do maths on a laptop.

I know people who had macbooks while reading engineering, and they got by. And I know people who did the course on overclocked desktops. No regrets here, my 920 @ 4ghz pretty much saw me through.

quickshot89 · 14 Aug 2013 at 16:56

ultrabook for notes / write ups and a decent desktop for solidworks or cad work

I did networking at uni and running VM's for server's and clients required me to use both my mbp and desktop to really get my head around the technologies