PC or Mac for engineering school? (engineers, program, teaching, requirements)
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Hi! Daughter is going to be attending Missouri S&T. We're going to give her a laptop for a graduation present. She thinks she wants a Mac, to stay "above the fray" of computer viruses. The reasons I have a Mac is that I like the platform better for music writing programs (I'm a musician), but other than that, I only use the computer for emailing and very simple word processing. She sees me never having computer problems, but I don't think she has thought through the fact that I don't really have to put my computer through the kind of paces her mom does w/ her line of work, medical education writing.
Mom has a PC and runs very sophisticated word processing programs, photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. So of course she's going to have more glitches than me.
Bottom line: I think that DD needs a PC to have the same interface/platform that probably the rest of the engineering world has.
I've worked for multiple engineering firms/fortune500 co's over the years and the engineering/product development/testing depts. always ran on PC platforms. Usually only the marketing/illustration dept. used Mac. Though my experience was mostly limited to mechanical and software engineering. Perhaps Mac is more often employed in other engineering disciplines (e.g. civil) or design side (e.g. for CAD design)?
The Engineering world runs almost entirely on windows pc's, with some databases in Unix based systems.
My engineering school made it a requirement to have a windows laptop for classes, since all the programs are windows based. I never had any issues with computer viruses using windows, and haven't had any issues with using windows as my platform. I've never seen an engineering company using Macs for their employees, so that's also an indicator of the preference.
That being said, Mac's are able to run windows nowadays if you want, so that may be an option if your daughter is more comfortable with one. During my senior year, I did have a few friends that had bought a Mac after their original computers needed replacing, and they ran windows on their macs when needed. There was always an engineering computer lab available if they needed specific access to a pc-based machine.
I'd guess that 98-99% of engineers use a PC for engineering applications in school and industry though, so it'd be my recommendation to use one as well; She may not have the computer support available if she runs into issues with a mac running windows programs. If you're hardset on a Mac, at least check with the engineering college's requirements before purchasing one. The engineering software she uses will be designed for windows/pc-based machines, so I'm not completely certain on how well a Mac can emulate those environments for all the engineering software.
You should definitely check with the school to see what they recommend. Most all engineering programs are for Windows. Also, a low end PC computer is not suitable for engineering programs and will be a pain to use (it will eventually be too slow to get work done).
do not need to check with the school..... asking your university about "what kind of computer should I get?" seems out of the picture and awkward
and yes get a PC, I'm teaching an engineering graphic course this term, 1 out of 34 students in my section couldn't use the program at home because he has a Mac -_- and our IT guy is not spending a lot of effort helping him out either, this is one of those things you just want to be with the majority.
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