Help me choose a laptop for college - Engineering

[surftheiop]

Im going to Cornell next year and they have a deal through the school to get discounts on Dells and Macs.
As far as Dells you can configure any Optiplex, Latitude, Precision or PowerEdge to your specifications.

About what i want you use it for: Pretty much multipurpose, main thing ill use for is typing papers/doing research etc..
Im not a huge gamer but I definately would want the ability to play CS:Source and have enough graphics to run LOTRO or comparable MMORPGs (im not playing any now but have in the past and i would want to be able to play one if it really caught my eye). But i dont need a super top of the line gaming rig by any means. Also i dont want it to be like 10 pounds or something because that would just defeat the purpose of having a laptop. I dont really plan on watching movies on it or having a ton of music so hard drive isnt much of a priority.
I dont really have a set price range but i dont wanna buy the most expensive thing just for the sake of having the most expensive laptop.

[tvta]

most of the laptops for sale will be able to run CSS fairly well. just make sure it has a graphics card that isnt complete crap, im sure anyone u ask at dell can answer the questions for you for any model. i have had a single dell laptop inspiron for all of college ~5 yrs and its still working fine. goodluck with engineering....made me wanna kill myself [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[kerowo]

LOTRO is only for PCs so if that is what you want to play that gets rid of Macs. WOW runs great on Macs though, and is better than LOTRO IMHO and the new MacBook Pro comes standard with 2G of ram.

[funkyworms]

Check around for deals. Don't assume that you're getting a good deal just because you're going through your school's "special deal". I investigated these deals at my former school and found the "deals" and "special prices" were just an illusion.

[surftheiop]

well on this one you build the computer on the dell site, see the dell price then send a screenshot to the school and then they tell you how much cheaper they can do it. So even if im not getting a great deal atleast i know im saving some money

[Jeff_B]

[ QUOTE ]
well on this one you build the computer on the dell site, see the dell price then send a screenshot to the school and then they tell you how much cheaper they can do it. So even if im not getting a great deal atleast i know im saving some money

[/ QUOTE ]

The on eat my school is like 15% off the dell but oyu forfeit the right to use the coupons dell puts out every once in a while.. I waited for like 2 weeks and got like a $750 off $2k system and well yeah thats >>> 15%
so shop around..

[bigalt]

This might be a moot point if you have gaming requirements, but you may want to consider what kinds of engineering software you might be running down the road junior or senior year.

You can of course use the computer labs, but it's nice to be able to work on it outside of there. If you'll be running labview (programming lite for engineers) or pspice (electrical/circuit design) or something, you'll probably want a good deal of desktop real estate or appropriate external monitor hookups. If you'll be doing some CAD work (mechanical), you probably want to get something with a dedicated video card.

[lastchance]

Dell
HP
IBM
Asus
Apple

http://www.notebookreview.com/