[Ryan1524]

do they? i mean, considering the course load and what the machine might be used for, does engineering students need a PB or will an iBook be much more than enough??

does Maple and Matlab require a lot of resources??

but then again, i'm hoping this machine can last me at least 4 years if possible..so maybe i should go for the best today??

[Kermy]

Personally, as an engineering student I'm surprised you're even considering a mac. I have a powerbook (had, looking to get a 15") and a pc and most engineering programs are on pcs. Though, it sorta does depend on what engineering you're doing.

[f1000]

If you’re trying to save money, then:

1. Buy the least amount of computer that you think you’ll need for two years.
2. Sell the computer after two years and buy a new one.

Computers depreciate too quickly to make it worth trying to buy one that’ll last all four years of college.

[nemanirc]

Buy desktops to last. Buy laptops knowing you will have to replace. Get the iBook now and get another one in two years. You will pay about 50% more over the four years, but in two, you'll get the latest and greatest. My wife inherited my PB G3 2000 model, and I don't know how she stands it! No bluetooth. No CD-RW. Heavy. Slow (400 MHz G3 versus my 867 MHz G4). Anyway, my 2¢.

[tr]

this may seem like a minority stance, but is a computer really needed? i know many universities are making students get computers, but at the university i attended (and where i work now), there are plenty of computer labs that can be accessed any time of day, and even labs specificallly for engineering students. and they have every program you would ever need, so no need to purchase software (even educational versions are quite pricey, especially if you are a poor college student ). if it's not a requirement of the school, and you really didn't have the cash, i would hold out on computer purchases.

that being said, if you really want one, or feel you need one, a pb or iBook would be fine. get what you can afford. i've never run matlab in X (it should work fine according to the requirements; release 13 has a minimum requirement of a G3 with 128mb RAM), but i have run mathematica on my G4 400 with no problems.

tr

[rglenn]

A notebook is very nice to have. I've never run MATLAB or Maple on an iBook or PowerBook (I'm re-entering the Mac world this summer)... but they run at an acceptable speed on an older PIII-750 with 192 MB RAM. So an iBook should be fine.

In your particular case (you're going to the same University as me), I can honestly tell you that you can get by just fine without a notebook. That said, I found having one to be very useful (Calculus lectures are far more interesting if a) you're watching a Simpsons episode, and b) you're not in the lecture hall while doing so)

I also wouldn't worry about using a Mac too much - many of the profs in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department are Mac users now.

[dreilly1]

I definitely think some kind of computer is a necessity for Engineering students these days. Without a computer, your schedule revolves around the times when the computer labs are open. Even if there are some computer labs that are open 24 hrs., not all of them will be, and your favorite lab probably won't be. Of the people who are populating those labs at 2AM, not all of them will be quietly doing their schoolwork, like you will be doing. Plus, who really wants to go to one of those labs at 2AM, anyway?

You do need to be careful about using a Mac, though. If you anticipate doing a lot of CAD programs, which generally aren't available on the Mac, you should know that VPC isn't really the best solution for that. VPC is not fast by any means. If, on the other hand, you're doing more theoretical stuff in Matlab, Mathematica, or Maple, it might not matter as much, as last I checked these were all available on OS X. And, of course, word processing and spreadsheets are available on all platforms.

Another thing to consider is whether the apps you need to use are available on Unix clusters on campus. If so, then X11 is your friend. As long as you have a network connection and a multi-button mouse, you can run any of those apps on the Unix servers and display them back to your computer. If your computer is essentially a dumb X-terminal, then it doesn't matter what OS it is running!

[alien]

I'm running Matlab on an older iBook (500 MHz G3). I'm sure both iBooks and PBs will do OK, but be warned that Matlab 6.5/R13 (the current) is a dog sometimes, particularly the GUI, which is Java-based. The app itself is running fine, btw. (Not that I'm doing any spectacular stuff.)

Matlab 7 is coming this fall, hopefully this version is better optimized for Mac. It'll only be for G4 and G5.

I haven't used Maple, but from what I've read, the situation is about the same.

With Terminal or X11 you can access all kinds of Unix servers. I've also run Matlab from a server, with X11.

Xcode is included so you can both write your own code and compile free standards-based software with ease.

I might buy another portable soon, if I do it'll definitely be a PB. This is mainly related to screen size. Matlab has a really big main window, and I often have several figure windows as well. Same goes for some X11 apps I've used. 1024x768 feels like too little, many Unix workstations has had much bigger screen for years.

All in all, I think a Mac is great for engineering students, as long as you also have access to labs that runs software only available for Windows or other platforms.

I won't buy a Windows PC. It seems like there's too much trouble with my office mates' Wintel laptops...

[Ryan1524]

yea, IF i get into the option i want in second year, Electrical and Biomedical Eng, then all i'll be using is Maple and Matlab. at least what a prof and some students told me.

the only problem would be Solid Edge that will be used in ONE class in the first year. but it's only for one class, so i figured it's not worth sweating for. i can just use the schol labs for that one.

but i am worried about circuit drafting softwares. rglenn, you're in electrical eng there, what kind of circuit board design softwares do you guys use??

[rglenn]

Originally posted by Ryan1524:
yea, IF i get into the option i want in second year, Electrical and Biomedical Eng, then all i'll be using is Maple and Matlab. at least what a prof and some students told me.

the only problem would be Solid Edge that will be used in ONE class in the first year. but it's only for one class, so i figured it's not worth sweating for. i can just use the schol labs for that one.

but i am worried about circuit drafting softwares. rglenn, you're in electrical eng there, what kind of circuit board design softwares do you guys use??

Actual design of PC Boards hasn't been covered yet. For circuit simulation, we use PSpice. A Mac alternative is here: http://www.macinit.com/description.html - but I'm told that the one that comes with the text works nicely under VirtualPC.

Another program that we use rather extensively in second and third year is the Altera MAX II Plus programmable logic development environment. There is no Mac version, but it is available in labs, and runs quite nicely under VirtualPC, I'm told (by quite nicely, I mean about as nicely as it does in Windows - the software is absolute, utter crap, but at least it's free)

But, in all seriousness, you'll probably wind up spending more time in MATLAB and Excel than just about any other program.

I mentioned earlier that a lot of the profs use Macs now. They're using raw, Unix command line tools for a lot of their stuff, I think. I'll try and get some more info on that for you.

It should be noted that, if 1C03 is set up anything like its predecessor 1C04 was (course codes, for non-McMasterites), you won't be allowed to use your own computer for the CAD assignments. They have to be completed within the lab period. So Solid Edge won't matter.

For programming courses starting in second year, you'll actually be at an advantage using a Mac, because you can point out that they don't offer the crappy Borland compiler for your machine, and the TAs will be forced to mark your assignments with a compiler that actually abides by standards and behaves predictably.

[KraziKid]

Originally posted by rglenn:
Actual design of PC Boards hasn't been covered yet. For circuit simulation, we use PSpice. A Mac alternative is here: http://www.macinit.com/description.html - but I'm told that the one that comes with the text works nicely under VirtualPC.

Another program that we use rather extensively in second and third year is the Altera MAX II Plus programmable logic development environment. There is no Mac version, but it is available in labs, and runs quite nicely under VirtualPC, I'm told (by quite nicely, I mean about as nicely as it does in Windows - the software is absolute, utter crap, but at least it's free)

But, in all seriousness, you'll probably wind up spending more time in MATLAB and Excel than just about any other program.

I mentioned earlier that a lot of the profs use Macs now. They're using raw, Unix command line tools for a lot of their stuff, I think. I'll try and get some more info on that for you.

It should be noted that, if 1C03 is set up anything like its predecessor 1C04 was (course codes, for non-McMasterites), you won't be allowed to use your own computer for the CAD assignments. They have to be completed within the lab period. So Solid Edge won't matter.

For programming courses starting in second year, you'll actually be at an advantage using a Mac, because you can point out that they don't offer the crappy Borland compiler for your machine, and the TAs will be forced to mark your assignments with a compiler that actually abides by standards and behaves predictably.

Hey, what school do you two go to? I am going to Rensselaer Polytechnic University next year, and am in the same category. My mac is fine for everything but the one semester of CAD I will have to take. I have been told by MUG members that SolidWorks (the CAD program my school uses) runs reasonably enough under VPC6 that I shouldn't be at a sever disadvantage. They said whatever I will have to do in class, I can do under VPC. Hopefully VPC7 will have the reported graphics acceleration, which will make SolidWorks run as well as it would on a crappy windows laptop the school provides. I purchased my PowerBook with the knowledge that I will not be able to do certain things as an Electrical Engineer, but knowing that I will have a much broader range of choices for the program I would like to use, except for this goddamn CAD class.

[jld]

iBook will be fine! I'm about to graduate with a BS in physics, and we have a lab full of Dual 550 G4s. And everything runs fine on there, Matlab and Mathematica. My powerbook runs them great, and considering the new iBooks are faster than my powerbook, you should fine.

[SplijinX]

Does an Engineering Student Need a PowerBook? My answer is a resounding NO. You’re stepping into the realm of “want” rather than “need”, unless you will be in a field of study that does a lot of software development, in which case I have seen swarms of CS majors toting PBs. My advice is if you really want to have a PowerBook, get it and build yourself a cheap PC to run engineering software you can’t on the PowerBook.

I honestly think any computer you buy now will run software four years down the road, it just might not be quite as snappy. If you’re still set on getting just a PB read on…

Alot of software you will use exists on the PC side. Some of the major programs you use will have native versions for the Mac, but I can’t help but to get this feeling something got lost in the translation.

I run MATLAB both on my PC (P3 850Mhz, 512MB) and a copy on my PB (12” RevA, 60GB, 640MB) using VPC and both Simulink simulations and .m file functions easily take 3 or 4 times longer to run – no big surprise since it’s not a fair comparison. But I get similar results when I try running code on a 1ghz iMac running Matlab for OS X, granted it’s somewhat faster, perhaps somewhere in between the two machines I have, but nothing stellar.

Then there’s the oddball software that your professor might want you to run for a certain assignment on project. Some of these programs won’t be installed at school computer labs, and depending on school policies, you might not admin privliges to install them on there, so you’ll have to resort to installing it on your own machine. They’re horribly written for Windows itself and finding an alternative may not be possible, so you may do a bit more research and ask upperclassman in more detail about stuff like this. And as an aside if your friends have problems loading it onto their PCs, don’t try putting it on VPC (blue screens of death don’t look well on PB’s).

Some other considerations you want to make will be software. Some schools have licenses with some companies so that you don’t have to pay as much. Unfortunately, a lot of these titles come in the windows variant and may end up costing you a lot of money or a lot of time to find something that will work with your PowerBook.

Of course there will be times you may have to do group projects, and often time those things like to run into the wee hours the day before they are due. If your PB can’t run the software, you can’t work on it. If the labs are closed you can’t work on it. Either way, you end up with pissed partners. Compatibility issues may arise, so integrating projects may take extra effort.

Not saying its not possible, just a lot more effort and headaches if you only with a PowerBook.

[dreilly1]

Originally posted by rglenn:
Actual design of PC Boards hasn't been covered yet. For circuit simulation, we use PSpice. A Mac alternative is here: http://www.macinit.com/description.html - but I'm told that the one that comes with the text works nicely under VirtualPC.

Another program that we use rather extensively in second and third year is the Altera MAX II Plus programmable logic development environment. There is no Mac version, but it is available in labs, and runs quite nicely under VirtualPC, I'm told (by quite nicely, I mean about as nicely as it does in Windows - the software is absolute, utter crap, but at least it's free)

But, in all seriousness, you'll probably wind up spending more time in MATLAB and Excel than just about any other program.

Wow. My hat's off to you if you actually have to do coursework on Max Plus II. That program is a pain to use. (Quartus is much worse, though, if you can believe it)

It sounds like your school uses a lot of older PC design software, which should (kind of) work under VPC. But for any project with any appreciable size to it, you'll want to run it natively. (It might just be for your final project, but I guarantee if you use VPC all the ime you'll wish you had an actual PC at least once during the course of the semester.) You might want to consider getting a dirt-cheap PC for a few hundred bucks, or building one yourself, just for those crunch times when you need the processing power. Building one yourself is probably the best option, since if you know the right people you can salvage most of the parts like the case, power supply, HD, and video card, and maybe even RAM. Even a slow PC processor with a slow HD and bad video card will probably work faster than all those things emulated through VPC. Plus, the PC can double as a File/MP3 server when you're not crunching numbers.

You should find out if your school has these FPGA design tools installed on Unix machines. If they do, then that might be your best bet, through X11. For that matter, many of these tools are available on Linux as well, and they run faster on Linux than Windows, all other things being equal. However, I suspect your school is using the free "baseline" Max Plus II, which only comes in Windows flavors.

I didn't do any FPGA design in college, BTW, but I've been doing FPGA and ASIC design and ASIC Design-for-Test for a few years now. In case you wanted to know...

[rglenn]

Originally posted by KraziKid:
Hey, what school do you two go to? I am going to Rensselaer Polytechnic University next year, and am in the same category.

McMaster University, in "lovely" Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

(Actually, Hamilton's not that bad once you get past the steel plants)

[rglenn]

Originally posted by dreilly1:
Wow. My hat's off to you if you actually have to do coursework on Max Plus II. That program is a pain to use. (Quartus is much worse, though, if you can believe it)

I somehow have little trouble believing that. I find that most manufacturer dev. tools, or free dev. tools, are crap.

(Hell, a lot of tools that you pay for suck too. Most engineers can't do UI, even for other engineers)

Originally posted by dreilly1:
It sounds like your school uses a lot of older PC design software, which should (kind of) work under VPC. But for any project with any appreciable size to it, you'll want to run it natively. (It might just be for your final project, but I guarantee if you use VPC all the ime you'll wish you had an actual PC at least once during the course of the semester.) You might want to consider getting a dirt-cheap PC for a few hundred bucks, or building one yourself, just for those crunch times when you need the processing power. Building one yourself is probably the best option, since if you know the right people you can salvage most of the parts like the case, power supply, HD, and video card, and maybe even RAM. Even a slow PC processor with a slow HD and bad video card will probably work faster than all those things emulated through VPC. Plus, the PC can double as a File/MP3 server when you're not crunching numbers.

I can vouch for the fact that there are PC labs for doing this kind of stuff if you need them - the final project labs are a must, as you need the oscilloscopes and Altera UP-2 development boards they provide. For non-final-project stuff, there's a student lab opening in September that has some Windows machines, 'scopes, development boards, PIC programmer, PCB mill... (being on the organizing committee of said lab helps with the whole knowing-the-capabilities thing)

That said... I don't find myself using the technical programs all that much. I find that just about everyone spends most of their time on a computer using e-mail, visiting course websites, writing reports in Word, or playing Trogdor. Any of those, I'd rather be doing on a Mac.

Originally posted by dreilly1:

You should find out if your school has these FPGA design tools installed on Unix machines. If they do, then that might be your best bet, through X11. For that matter, many of these tools are available on Linux as well, and they run faster on Linux than Windows, all other things being equal. However, I suspect your school is using the free "baseline" Max Plus II, which only comes in Windows flavors.

I didn't do any FPGA design in college, BTW, but I've been doing FPGA and ASIC design and ASIC Design-for-Test for a few years now. In case you wanted to know...

UNIX terminals? I wish. Only the Software Engineering guys get UNIX terminals, and they're rather protective of them

[jorgem4]

As an engineering student, first of all I would go for a portable...iBook or PB...just because you will find your self studying at other places than your room and you might need a computer at your hand. (Yes there are computer labs) but nothing beats using your own personal computer to do your work.

Now as an engineer...I am surprice you want a Mac. But oh well I've been an engineering student (mechanical) for 4 years and since I was born I've been using Mac. I know other engineers that also use Mac, but the bast majority (like the rest of the world) use PC. Many engineer apps are now available for OS X but there are some that are far from that.

Any way buy a PB...it is a more powerful computer than the iBook and it will last you for sure...nothing against the iBook but I just think the PB are better in the long run.

[dreilly1]

Originally posted by rglenn:
UNIX terminals? I wish. Only the Software Engineering guys get UNIX terminals, and they're rather protective of them

Well, that's the thing. You don't need a UNIX terminal, just a login on a machine with the software on it. Then you just display back to whatever machine you're running X on, then it's good to go.

As for the guy who asked why an engineer would prefer a Mac, I prefer Macs because they simply work with less hassle. I have to deal with PC's all day at work; why would I want to deal with the same thing at home? (Luckily, though, I do most of my real design work on my Sun workstation, and we're using Linux more too for number crunching, so my only need for PC's at work is for documentation, project management, playing MP3's, and surfing MacNN. )

[rglenn]

Originally posted by dreilly1:
Well, that's the thing. You don't need a UNIX terminal, just a login on a machine with the software on it. Then you just display back to whatever machine you're running X on, then it's good to go.

Yeah, but we have basically nothing to connect to. There are a handful of machines running Mandrake Download Edition, but that's about it. We've been taken over by the Killer Micros and Windows.

Wish there was a VAX somewhere that I could play with... *sob*

[nate_02]

All students need a powerbook

[Arcayx]

And I can only speak from personal experience here. I figured I would chime in.
I'm in my 3rd (or 4th, depending on how you count) year of Electrical Engineering at the University of Waterloo in... Well, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Throughout my post-secondary career, I've never owned a PC. I used virtual PC during one term for one course. I started with a 500 MHz PB G4 and I recently upgraded to the new 1.5 GHz 15" model.
There have been a number of times that my Mac gave me an advantage, but I'm not convinced its entirely a Mac vs. PC thing. Especially in programming courses, it has been a benefit. The Unix side of OS X is a definite asset. With the new requirement this term to upload labs reports in .pdf format instead of handing in hard copies, you should have seen 100+ PC users scramble to pirate Adobe software when PDF output is built into OS X. Priceless moments...
A week doessn't go by in which one of my PC using classmates are reserving the entire weekend to "Clean" their PC or "reinstall Windows". (Since we're MS slaves here, we get all the free copies of Windows we can eat) What a waste of productive study time. I prefer that the damn thing just run and get my work done.

Do you "need" a PowerBook? No. I don't think a computer is even necessary. I know I could get by just fine without one. (the entire school has a 24 hour open door policy not only on labs, but all buildings, etc. I'm not sure how often computer labs are open at other schools) But its a great tool to have at your disposal. Even more so if its a PowerBook, in my experience.