Should I buy the new MacBook Pro or the Surface Book/Surface Pro for Mechanical Engineering in college?
While personally a Mac user, I think you’ll have a much easier time running various Engineering software packages on Windows. The biggest and best example would be Solidworks. It’s hard to avoid this piece of software in the engineering field and it runs only on Windows.Another big example is AutoCAD, which does run on Mac, but is always first released on Windows, the Mac version is a port that comes second in priority for the company.There are countless other pieces of engineering and scientific software that run only on Windows.Mac is great for web development, visual design, photography and other such fields but for scientific purposes, I’d stick with Windows.
Should I buy the new Razer Blade or Macbook Pro Retina 15" / Surface Book?
It depends on what your goals are.If you really want the ultimate in portability as well as features that make student life easy and actually relaxing at points, you cannot go wrong with the Surface Book. I am still a little confused about it’s design, but when you can throw the tablet in and the pencil and call it a day at class, come home and snap it together and start writing papers, its hard to argue about how easy MS has made it to be a student who wants to slim down their backpack.If you want the amazing OS X and Apple ecosystem, MacBook Pro Retina 15″ all day, all week, all year long. I use the 15 in MacBook Pro, iPad Pro with Pencil and my iPhone and the experience is seamless. I can write a reminder on my phone and be reminded later when I am watching a video 2 hours later (I definitely would have forgotten to do so and so). Calendar sync is amazing and if I could only bring my tablet, or my phone, or my laptop to class one day, I wouldn't feel behind or ill prepared. This is an amazing ecosystem for maintaining an organized life.If you want to play games as well as have a stylish and powerful laptop, choose the Razer Blade. It is a great laptop, build quality-wise and the only gripe I have with it is the fact that it is limited to Windows OS. This is as close to MacBook Pro as it gets on the Windows side of the PC world. Powerful machine as well as the same attention to detail that Apple has with the added bump that it incorporates the biggest desires of Windows: customizability.I thought I would be fair and not mention that the MacBook Pro 15 has the option for the dedicated graphics card and to run Windows. MacBook Pro is the greatest laptop to run windows with the Razer Blade and Dell XPS 15 following close behind build quality and experience wise.
What is the best computer for school? I will be using it often because it is a full time online school. I also like gaming but I do not know if I need to buy a separate computer or just a console. People say MacBook Pro, but is that really the best?
You need something thin, rather light, with good battery life, in addition to being powerful for the use at school and casual gaming. To be earnest, it would be rather senseless to buy a MacBook pro unless it was utterly necessary to have to use Final Cut Pro (withal, Adobe Video or DXO programs should do a congruent job on that.) And in addition, the 13″ models only have “Iris” graphics (for a computer without a touch screen, that is rather unacceptable at the price it comes. As it is even less powerful than a mx150!) Even the top models only sport a Radeon 560x (which is half as powerful as a 1060, or slightly less than a 1050 (non-ti model). Thus, with this in in mind, here is a rundown:#1: Microsoft Surface Book 2 (13″ i7 or 15″)Rather pricey, albeit ticking all the marks and great looking. In this case, the only caveat would be the price, ranging from $1499 for the base model described (the i5 model only sports Iris graphics.(Note: The Surface Laptop and Surface are disgraces. Please do not buy unless you must.)#2 Razer Blade and Blade Pro (Blade stealth non-applicable unless you want to buy a E-GPU, see my notes in case you still are interested.)Same case as the surface, albeit leaning more towards gaming, in addition to a lack of touchscreen in non-4K models. Cannot become a tablet either.(Note: get a Core X, Core V2 or another thunderbolt 3 eGPU for the Blade Stealth. Pair with at least a 1050ti, or a Radeon RX580. Only Quadros if you are going to do more technical things such as CAD on the computer.)#3 Huawei Matebook X proAlbeit less powerful than the surface and the Blades (due to it's MX150 GPU) this gorgeous computer ticks all the marks. Cannot become a tablet.(Note: Check Razer's)Moreover, as for your comment in consoles, most output videogames at 30FPS (Correct me if I am wrong.) Moreover, they are not portable and videogames are typically more expensive (aside from the fact that PC has a wider array of videogames through sites such as Steam.)In a final analysis, everything comes down to both your needs and budget.Hope this helped!
Are gaming laptops from Alibaba.com really that cheap or all of these just scams?
To give you an example of what you get when you buy Chinese, I bought a Chuwi branded dual tablet called the Hi8 Pro, it had Windows and Android dual boot which was really awesome, and it had a nice screen too. The problem was the idiots left only about 15 Gb on the Windows drive so Windows 10 could not be updated ever, it kept giving various messages on startup that this system is out of date etc.In addition some things were not functioning, like the SD card on Android, and the USB port had a totally ridiculous transfer speed of like 1Mb/sec. Android was completely bare bones, so it took a lot of effort to get what you get out of the box with other brands. I really liked it and spend a lot of time fixing it up, unfortunately after about 6 months, it died. The screen all of a sudden died halfway and the other half displayed some sort of weird stripy artifacts. Don’t buy Chinese, they sell junk, save your money and time.Those gaming laptops even if they have a real Nvidia GPU they’ll have some other fake parts that will perform worse than anything you can buy from a real company, these are system probably put together by small fly-by-night companies, who will not take responsibility for anything. Even the ones that have a brand name like Chuwi and pretend to have warranty and customer service are to avoid. Everything about the product is a piece of junk with minimal quality control and obvious lack of know-how.
I'm about to go to college and I'm deciding between the XPS 13 and the new Surface. What should I get?
I’m bias by my own experience:My XPS 14 in a 13 frame was shipped in June 2012 and is still running strong. Last year I had the original 128 GB drive begin to fail and contrary to our ‘normal advice’ to clients I acquired a replacement 256 GB drive for it. With the new drive I also transformed it from a Window 7 Prof. to Windows 10 Prof. notebook and it continues to work well in it’s second life.So if the new ones are similar to the old ones I think you will get your money’s worth with the Dell XPS 13.To be fair I have worked all day on the Dell but never attempted to on any of the older Surface devices. The BIG differential point for me is the ‘real-work’ and ‘back-light’ keyboard of the Dell vs. the ‘cover/keyboard’ of the Surface. The only other comparison point I know that I think is a BIG deal is the new Surface unit’s rating of 13.5 hours battery life which is very attractive compared to specs for the Dell XPS 13 of 8 hours.You may wish to check these related links:Should I buy a Dell XPS 13 or 15? (My Quora response)Surface Pro Technical Specs - Versatility & Performance (by Microsoft)Dell XPS 13 2016 Review: An Ultrabook Improvement | NotebookReview.comThe last link may be particularly interesting. It includes several comparative ratings that include the Surface Pro 4 and the Dell XPS 13.