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Chromebook for engineering? ADVICE needed!

So I'm off to uni next year to study mech/general engineering. I have been given a £350 budget for a laptop for Christmas, has anyone got any advice for me? I have heard that most students use the department pcs when they need to use program's like matlab and things (please correct me if I'm wrong) so would I be able to get a chrome book (as they are much cheaper!) for leisure and lecture notes? Or would I be better off getting a low spec laptop that might struggle with heavier program's like matlab?


Thanks :smile:
Original post by Goldenballs97
So I'm off to uni next year to study mech/general engineering. I have been given a £350 budget for a laptop for Christmas, has anyone got any advice for me? I have heard that most students use the department pcs when they need to use program's like matlab and things (please correct me if I'm wrong) so would I be able to get a chrome book (as they are much cheaper!) for leisure and lecture notes? Or would I be better off getting a low spec laptop that might struggle with heavier program's like matlab?


Thanks :smile:


Yeah, most students just use the uni's computers for the more strenuous software. I had got a laptop half way though my course but didn't really use if for uni.

And chances are you won't be using Matlab much anyway, nor is it particularly computer intensive. It's mainly CAD and FEA that require lots of computing power.
Original post by Smack
Yeah, most students just use the uni's computers for the more strenuous software. I had got a laptop half way though my course but didn't really use if for uni.

And chances are you won't be using Matlab much anyway, nor is it particularly computer intensive. It's mainly CAD and FEA that require lots of computing power.


Think I'll go with the chromebook then, thanks for the help :smile:
Hi there! Also doing a Mech Engineering Degree at Southampton, Yeah most people use Uni computers for Mat labs although I personally use my own(macbook Air 13 Retina, Full spec), I prefer to do my work at home on the couch than at uni but whatever, The amount of work we do I would suggest a windows machine, It'll be much more compatible with everything and doesn't require a constant internet connection... Plus the keyboards on chrome books aren't the nicest things to use...

Found a few suggestions for you based on your budget :
This one is Incredibly cheap, Good enough for assignments etc and has decent battery life, Just don't try to run Cad on it... (http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/laptops-netbooks/laptops/laptops/acer-aspire-v3-112p-11-6-touchscreen-laptop-silver-10029079-pdt.html#cat-0)

Or if you wanted to max out your budget, You could probably run it all on here but poorly. (http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/laptops-netbooks/laptops/laptops/acer-aspire-v3-112p-11-6-touchscreen-laptop-silver-10029079-pdt.html#cat-0)

Hope that helped!
Try and find info from people currently at the uni about the computers they have there. At Sheffield the ones available aren't great (although they're trying to fix that) so really you need a good computer yourself. As said before, Matlab usually isn't that intensive but there are a handful of situations where it can make a difference having the ability to process the data quickly. CAD on the other hand is quite intensive, so I'd argue you might want to ask your parents if you can pay towards the present and go for something in the £500-600 range.

Another alternative would be building a cheap desktop and then getting a tablet like a Hudl2 which I think you could stream matlab onto. However this would only really work if you've got a car to bring it up, alongside stuff like a monitor, keyboard and mouse. For both desktop and tablet you'd then be looking at about £380, maybe up to £450 with a graphics card to help with CAD, but you can add that in later.

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