There are a wide range of engineering degrees out there, reflecting the variety of specialties that an engineer can pursue in their professional lives. Engineering is definitely a solid career choice, and there is a specialty to appeal to anybody. You will, of course, need to learn to love math, as that will be at the heart of any engineering degree.
But, no matter what type of engineering degree you are studying for, you will need a laptop to do your work on. In fact, depending on the engineering degree you are doing, you might need quite a specialized laptop; one that can handle 3D modeling and other graphically and computationally intensive tasks.
The following article aims to help you find the right laptop for your engineering degree, no matter what your specialty is. Whether you will be going into university every day to study for a civil engineering degree, or you will be studying an online engineering management degree, having the right laptop for studying an engineering degree will make a world of difference.
What Will You Be Using it for?
This is the most important thing to consider when you are deciding which laptop to buy for your studies. Will you be using your laptop mostly for word processing, 3D modelling or even programming? You need to know what the primary purpose of your laptop is going to be before you can decide which laptop is the most suitable model for you.
If you are going to be using CAD or CAE software during your degree, then you will usually need a relatively powerful laptop. There are some subtle differences between the kind of portable workstation that an engineering student uses and the kind of laptop that is built for gaming. Both machines need to be powerful, but there are different kinds of power that a computer can have. Both laptops are often used interchangeably, but it is worth being aware of the difference.
What’s Your Priority?
In all likelihood, your laptop will be serving a number of functions while you complete your studies. When it comes to word processing, Microsoft Office used to be the standard. If you want to use Office, you will either need to buy a bundle or be willing to pay the subscription fee. However, Office is no longer the only player in town. You can use Google’s cloud-based office apps for free, and they support Office file formats.
If you are going to be using any more specialized software packages, make sure that you research these so you know what the requirements are for running them. In some cases, you will need a powerful computer to handle the work you’ll be doing. If this is the case, there’s no getting around the cost of a powerful laptop.
A powerful laptop will also usually need to be bigger to accommodate more advanced cooling features. If portability is important to you, then you might want to get a cheaper netbook-style laptop to use for more basic functions.
What Hardware Do I Need?
If you aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of computer components, then it can all be a bit confusing when you’re trying to pick out the right laptop for your needs. The good news is that you only need to learn a few things here and you will be able to pick out the right laptop for your purposes with confidence. Let’s take a look at some of the most important hardware terms you will need to understand.
Memory and Storage
RAM is your computer’s memory - which is different from storage. Your computer's memory, RAM, stores information while your computer is turned on but is cleared every time it is powered off. Storage, on the other hand, is the laptop’s hard drive. The hard drive stores information and retains that information even when the power is turned off.
You will want to have plenty of RAM and storage. However, plenty of RAM means anything in the 8GB+ range. Most computers offer between 4 and 32GB these days. The most basic laptops still use 2GB. If you will be doing 3D modeling, you will need to have a reasonable amount of RAM as that’s RAM-intensive work.
CPU
The CPU is the central processing unit. If you are only looking for a laptop to handle word processing etc., then you won’t need to worry much about this. Any laptop on sale should be able to handle these tasks. If you are buying a low-spec machine, it will usually be an Intel Atom or Xeon or, more rarely, an ARM processor.
If you are looking for a more powerful machine, then you will want to make sure that the laptop uses an Intel i5 or i7 processor. These are high-end processors that will be able to handle complex 3D modeling work. If you only need to do 2D modeling, then you can usually drop down to an i3.
GPU
The graphics processing unit is more complicated. Most of the mobile workstations that are best suited for engineering work will utilize an onboard graphics card. It used to be that an onboard graphics chip would be significantly worse than a dedicated GPU. However, there are plenty of powerful onboard GPUs that can give dedicated cards a run for their money.
Make sure that you put the GPU model number of any laptop you are thinking about buying into Google so you can find out exactly how powerful it is. You can find benchmark results online that will quantify exactly how powerful a particular chip or card is.
The best laptop for you will depend on the specific course that you’re taking and what you plan to do with the laptop. If your work is going to require you to use CAD or CAE software, or any other form of modeling, then you are going to need a laptop with high enough specs to comfortably handle the work. Whatever you do, make sure that the laptop you choose is going to be up to the task.
