Laptop Purchse (12th Man Technology)

1,838 Views | 1 Replies | Last: 3 yr ago by A1_Ag_95
Gus
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AG
Looking to buy engineering laptop for incoming freshman. The 12th Man Technology store seems to be priced competitively and it would be nice to have loaner and repair option on campus.

Any thoughts or experiences?
Lone Stranger
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I teach seniors in engineering and hear their discussions on the subject. I also have a son that is a senior in ME this fall. Keep in mind that what A&M thinks will work right now for a student may not work as well in 2 or 3 years as software changes, advances, etc. My son had a jr ME class last spring where his A&M system would take 55 minutes to run and crash about 1 times out of 4 while his friends with newer state of the art gaming systems were running it in 45 seconds and not crashing. Here are the general thoughts I hear from listening to my students, my son and his engineering friends.

-A&M said this system would meet my needs and it has support so my parents thought I should get it. It was mostly true the system met my needs but I ended up with a professor my friends didn't have and that professor required us to run specialty software my A&M system wouldn't run. I had to find a friend with a system that would run it. But overall it worked pretty well. The farther I get from freshman year the more issues I've run into with a 3 year old laptop and new software.

-Man....you can get a similar spec'd system to the A&M ones for 1/3 to 1/2 the price of the A&M systems by dropping down to an ASUS or similar and waiting for a good Best Buy sale. With the money I saved as a freshman I can buy a brand new system as as a junior and have a more up to date system for my last two years and probably be money ahead.

Yo....But what about my gaming man? What you need is a top end gaming system with all the bells and whistles so you can do all your class stuff and also run all the latest gaming stuff. Who cares about price.....I live to game!

So you see a good amount of each from spec'd up lower end ASUS, etc bought on sale to your fair share of $4-5k gaming laptops in class and everything in between. The students with the high end gaming systems do tend to be the ones whose systems will run a really complex CAD/Solidworks stress simulation on a complex moving hydraulic system very fast and with no crash issues.

By junior year most engineering students will tell you they have had more issues with an Apple system running software than any of their friends with windows based systems. That has for years tended to be the nature of engineering software.
A1_Ag_95
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