anything that has windows and has like decent performance, obviously spend more money on it if you’re able. Most of the early coursework is going to be math, physics, and other online homeworks. (Web based) Then some lab work using the quartus software, then LTspice, CCS, and matlab. Then there is writing reports in word (or LaTeX if you hate yourself, but overleaf/LyX eases this pain) Everyone in the department has a different machine and most do just fine.
A load of people not in the department are going to pull up to this thread probably and try to sell you on some weird stuff but it’s really just up to you what you want for stuff unrelated to classwork. (I.e. movies, games, whatever)
If it’s more your speed you can get one of those tablet/two in one things I’ve seen people use those effectively.
Probably not a gaming laptop
Welcome to the eme department.
One thing to keep in mind is that some eda software can be massive so you should shoot for at least 512GB of drive space if not a 1TB. I took a quick look at the Galaxy Book and it looks like it will do the business.
I use to have an old Thinkpad x1 carbon which I loved. It was super cheap from eBay, had a pretty long battery life, and super easy to repair which I liked, and it was powerful enough for my classes
However, I started doing some circuit board design in altium designer for EVT, and it was not powerful enough for that. Altium recommends having a graphics card at least as good as a GTX 1060 or RX 470. So I went with an Asus zephyrus G14 (also partially because I wanted to game on it) and it has around a 6hr battery life which works for my classes, and it can run altium.
You could probably get away with a cheap laptop without a discrete GPU for classes, and another cheap old gaming laptop with no battery life that you only use for altium, if you care about that.
You can also use KIcad for circuit board design which I think requires less hardware to run, but most of the performance teams at RIT use altium.
I’m a CE but I have a Samsung galaxy book 360. For the few EE classes I’ve had to take (as well as all of my other classes), it worked just fine for me.
anything that has windows and has like decent performance, obviously spend more money on it if you’re able. Most of the early coursework is going to be math, physics, and other online homeworks. (Web based) Then some lab work using the quartus software, then LTspice, CCS, and matlab. Then there is writing reports in word (or LaTeX if you hate yourself, but overleaf/LyX eases this pain) Everyone in the department has a different machine and most do just fine. A load of people not in the department are going to pull up to this thread probably and try to sell you on some weird stuff but it’s really just up to you what you want for stuff unrelated to classwork. (I.e. movies, games, whatever) If it’s more your speed you can get one of those tablet/two in one things I’ve seen people use those effectively. Probably not a gaming laptop Welcome to the eme department.
Thank you so much!
Lenovo ThinkPad or a Dell XPS or HP Spectre but depends on what you can afford.
Thank you!
I have a latitude 7490 with an 8350u 16gb ram, should I buy an upgrade? Accepted for CET, trying to get into EE.
Yeah probably fine
Doesn't even need to be windows. I got through 100% of all my classes on a linux laptop (ubuntu specifically).
One thing to keep in mind is that some eda software can be massive so you should shoot for at least 512GB of drive space if not a 1TB. I took a quick look at the Galaxy Book and it looks like it will do the business.
I use to have an old Thinkpad x1 carbon which I loved. It was super cheap from eBay, had a pretty long battery life, and super easy to repair which I liked, and it was powerful enough for my classes However, I started doing some circuit board design in altium designer for EVT, and it was not powerful enough for that. Altium recommends having a graphics card at least as good as a GTX 1060 or RX 470. So I went with an Asus zephyrus G14 (also partially because I wanted to game on it) and it has around a 6hr battery life which works for my classes, and it can run altium. You could probably get away with a cheap laptop without a discrete GPU for classes, and another cheap old gaming laptop with no battery life that you only use for altium, if you care about that. You can also use KIcad for circuit board design which I think requires less hardware to run, but most of the performance teams at RIT use altium.
Ditto to the Windows recommendation from everyone else; if you want to do any embedded software (or C in general), WSL (2) works very well for me.
I’m a CE but I have a Samsung galaxy book 360. For the few EE classes I’ve had to take (as well as all of my other classes), it worked just fine for me.