I will be a freshman at UCLA majoring in electrical engineering and I need some advice on which laptop to get. I have consulted with UCLA and they have no official recommended OS and say to get the best specs you can afford. Windows is what most of the programs run on but they offer remote server access or I can use boot camp or parallels for Mac. My budget is $1600 or less. I am looking to use it for school and engineering programs. Matlab, and an IDE for coding is the main necessity. It needs to be portable and have a battery that can get me through the day. I am not a gamer so that doesn't matter to me. Reliability and future proofing is of the utmost importance as I don't want to be buying a new computer while as an undergrad.
Here are my three choices:
1. MacBook Pro Retina 2015 13 inch
Cpu: Intel Core i5 2.7 ghz dual core 28 watt (broadwell 5th generation)
GPU: Intel Iris 6100 integrated graphics
Ram: 8 gb or 16 gb LPDDR3 (not sure which amount)
Storage: 256 gb or 512 gb PCIE SSD (not sure which size to get either)
Education Pricing: $1399-$1699 depending on model
2. Dell XPS 13 QHD Touch
CPU: Intel Core i7 2.5 ghz dual core 15 watt (skylake 6th generation)
GPU: Intel HD 520 integrated graphics
Ram: 8 gb or 16 gb LPDDR3 (not sure which one to get)
Storage: 256 gb or 512 gb PCIE SSD (not sure what to get)
Education Pricing: $1199-1709 depending on model
3. Dell XPS 15 4K touch
CPU: Intel Core i7 2.6 ghz quad core 45 watt or Intel Core i5 2.3 ghz quad core 45 watt (6th generation skylake)
GPU: Nvidia GTX 960m 2 gb GDDR5
Ram: 8gb or 16 gb DDR4 (not sure what to get)
Storage: 256 gb or 512 gb PCIE SSD (not sure what to get)
Education Pricing: $1439-$1697
Summary:
The MacBook Pro is in the middle to higher end on pricing. I love Mac OSX and the Mac build quality though the Dell is quite good too. The reliability and battery life on the Mac is a pro as well. I am mostly concerned with its 5th gen processor vs 6th but it is a 28 watt vs 15 watt on the XPS 13 so it's more powerful. Also the Mac would need to do a Remote Desktop or run boot camp so 256 vs 512 SSD becomes more important. The Dell XPS 13 is small and slim but for the i7 with 512 SSD it costs more than the Dell XPS 15 with i7 and 512 SSD. So the trade off there is portability vs power. Basically I can see pros and cons to all three laptops. I'm leaning towards the MacBook but the Dell XPS 13 and 15 are convincing alternatives. I'm looking for any advice and thanks for taking the time to read this.
↧