Best computer for Graduate Life? (Do I really need to save up for a MacBook Pro?)

[cabraloca]

So I'm calculating costs to start graduate school and thinking that I need a new computer, I just don't know which one to get.

I want something that is fast, good with multiple apps (PowerPoint, Word, Adobe pdf reader, Gmail, Netflix, YouTube) but also... I think I might want to get the diploma in Cultural Studies, and I would really want to up my game visually and get a Macbook Pro just because of the image, audio and visual quality. However, I also see that it is more expensive compared to other laptops. What other alternatives do I have? I don't have a desktop and my old laptop is practically dead so I really need to buy something now to get me through.

All advice is welcome. I'm just trying to figure out if it's worth it.

[fuzzylogician]

There have been multiple discussions of this question on the board. The best advice seems to be to wait and see what machine people in your department use, and get the same type of computer. If you can't wait, you might want to ask your future advisor about this, because compatibility issues might arise if e.g. you are using a Mac and everyone else uses a PC (or vice versa). You might also try to reach out to current students to see what they use. This will give you the best idea of what should work for you at your program and given your particular needs. 

[maelia8]

I'm in the humanities and over 90% of the people in my department have Macs (pro or air). My partner is in the sciences and most folks have HPs, Acers, or Dells, though more folks are starting to get the Windows Surface or Huaweis. I have a 13-inch Air and it's perfect for my needs (portability, compatibility) as I travel a lot. 

[Eigen]

Unless you're doing a lot of heavy work (intense video editing, modeling), it's very unlikely that you need a Pro, and that a MacBook or MacBook Air would suffice. 

IMO, most people overestimate how much "computer" they need for their work. 

[rising_star]

Agreed that most people overestimate what they need. Would I pay the premium for a MacBook Pro when I could get a PC with all the same features for half the money? Probably not. But that's largely a personal decision. (FWIW, I'm in the social sciences and can do 70% of my work from a Chromebook if I want to.)

[Eigen]

Windows/Mac mostly comes down to OS and programs, honestly. 

You pay a premium for the hardware, but the OS is free and most software cheaper (from my experience). 

But yeah, I buy refurbished models and rarely upgrade them. My 2011 Air I got for $600 in 2012, and it still does everything I need. 

[Cheshire_Cat]

For the first year I was in the Ph.D program I had a desktop and a Samsung tablet (and not the expensive tablet either, haha!)  It actually worked out well for taking notes and creating powerpoints during class and being portable, and I still love that tablet.  However, when I decided to upgrade, I got a Surface and it is nice! Like what other people have said, I'd wait and see what others in your department have.

[tonydoesmovie]

10 hours ago, Eigen said:

Windows/Mac mostly comes down to OS and programs, honestly. 

You pay a premium for the hardware, but the OS is free and most software cheaper (from my experience). 

But yeah, I buy refurbished models and rarely upgrade them. My 2011 Air I got for $600 in 2012, and it still does everything I need. 

Refurbished through Apple store? Or through another vendor? I'm really intrigued to buy refurbished, as I had felt it would be a more economical choice to go PC to attain similar specs. I'm looking currently at the Apple site, and it shows refurb Air 13" for $979 ($170 off, or a savings of 14%) and new for $999. I'm not good with maths, but that doesn't feel $170 off.

[Eigen]

Did you check the specs? My guess is it's an older built to order computer with a list price higher than $999, probably a larger SSD. The refurbished base 13" goes for $809. 

I'm leery of buying second hand used computers, but direct from Apple has served me well. Same warranty; and well refurbished/new battery. 

[3dender]

If it's compatible, Macbooks are worth the premium (not Pro, I agree you don't need that).  They require hardly any maintenance and a few years down the road are still running 90% as fast as when new.  I've never met a PC I can say the same about -- and that's before even taking into account all the countless hours you will spend running virus/malware scans.  

I don't like Apple snobbery but their machines are simply better and it's not particularly close.

[ThePursuit]

This is a department specific kind of thing as others have said. I am heading into a department that is largely Mac and so I purchased the 2016 MacBook Pro with 512GB Capacity, 16GB Memory, and a slightly boosted i5 processor. This came to about $2,300 in total after buying a few accessories. What may kill you are the number of adaptors you will need for old flash drives. Prior to getting my new MacBook, I used Windows since I was a young kid (anyone remember Windows 98?). I am very satisfied with my purchase. There is a learning curve, but it's not a large one. The major learning curve is associated with Word/Excel on Mac, a lot of the paragraph options are in different locations.

If you need Windows for your work, PC is probably a much more logical and economical option; however, you can boot Windows as a virtual machine on MacOS. A lot of my friends going into chemistry programs went the PC route. My one friend absolutely stands by ASUS as a PC brand. I would warn against Acer PCs, from my experience they crash after a year or two. 

If you decide to get a MacBook Pro, Apple just announced an updated model with i7 processors for the entry model. I hope this helps.

Edited June 13, 2017 by ThePursuit

[Eigen]

Just re-iterating that nearly no-one needs the computing power of the new MBP for graduate school. You're fine with an older model, or the base Macbook/Macbook Air. And if you're doing something for school that needs that level of power, chances are you either have a line to a computing cluster, or your research group will have special desktops for it. If you're one of the few people who does need this, you probably know your exact requirements, and are spending more on programs than the computer anyway.

Additional HD space is nice, but external HDs are much cheaper than the insane premium you pay for internal SSD space in a mac, and rarely do you actually need that much space (some particular lines of work, i.e. microscopy, excepted). 

It's a great ploy to get you to buy ever "faster" more expensive computers, but it's rarely needed. And there's probably something more worthwhile you can do with the $1300 difference between a low and high end laptop.

[Sigaba]

If you plan to buy a refurbished computer, I recommend that you research owners' reviews of the make/model you want and also research the components inside the computer. A refurbished computer may have addressed issue A, but issue B (a defective chip or substandard adhesives or bad soldiering) can be a ticking bomb.

I also recommend that you pay attention to the GB requirements for machines running Windows 10 if you plan to upgrade a refurbished machine from an older version of Windows. Windows 10 automatic updates are turning my refurbished Thinkpad T450s into an also ran because of its too small SSD.

I kind of disagree with @Eigen on the issue of processing power. If you want to pay some extra coin to go up a notch, I recommend doing so. My thought is that watching Elementary on Hulu and Penny Dreadful on Netflix doing multi tabbed research while downloading PDFs should be a smooth, worry free experience. YMMV.

[Eigen]

But the vast majority of computers can do that. My 2010 MacBook Air can run multiple tabs of research papers easily while I'm writing. 

That's kinda my point. The average computer now is built for doing high res 3D modeling, when the average user is, well, reading lots of websites and writing things. 

[TakeruK]

I don't think anyone *needs* a Macbook Pro, but it is certainly really nice. When I started grad school, my school had a sale on their MBPs and I got one in 2012 for $1050. But the newest MBPs are a lot more expensive now, unfortunately . In my program, I would say 90% of the people use Mac and probably over 2/3rds of my entire field uses Mac.  My cohort was 100% Mac!

At five years old, my current MBP no longer runs fast enough for me to do serious work on it. I am looking to upgrade soon, but can't buy one yet since there's lots of startup costs with moving and I only received my first full postdoc paycheque recently! I am currently encountering tons of problems opening large PDFs or even just working on powerpoint when I have large files. Not so much a problem for scientific talks, but I also give a lot of outreach talks which have nice movies and animations so my powerpoints are 50MB+ and it can be very difficult to edit them. Even opening a dialog box (e.g. if I want to save a file from Google Chrome, it takes 30s or more to open up that screen that asks me where to save the file).

My advice for laptops is to get something that will still be useful to you in 3-4 years. Although each person will vary, I regularly take my laptop with me whereever I go, so I have found that 3-4 years is about the time where laptops start to fall apart (although my MBP have been way more sturdy than the Dells I had in the past). Because of that, there's no point getting the top of the line laptop for a regular user, since your laptop could fall apart physically before its hardware becomes obsolete. For desktops and more sturdy computer, I think it's best to get as close to top of the line as possible, so that it is still computationally relevant in 5-7 years. When my advisor in grad school bought me an iMac desktop, they asked me to put all the upgrades possible on it. It was only a few hundred dollars more, but now that I've left, the next student is able to use my 3 year old iMac and it's as relevant today as it was when I got it.

Finally, while I agree that with Mac, you pay more than you would for the same computing power with a HP or Dell, I think the look and feel of a computer has value too. And its ability to interface with your work computers and your colleagues. I probably should have upgraded my laptop last year, but waited to see what setup I could get at my postdoc location. Since I am able to work on a Mac here as well, I'll plan on getting another MBP when I upgrade my laptop later this fall.

[samman1994]

Check to see what everyone else has. In the sciences, most people actually have pcs, and we will often times share files that are made in Microsoft Office, and Macs struggle with formatting or opening said files. We had a person in our lab who had a mac, and they had problems all the time with files to send us, or files we sent her. Personally, from what I know, everything you can do with a mac you can do with a pc, with the exception of the arts (film, music, editing, etc.). PC has the benefit that you can modify it and use it for other things (if you know what you're doing). If you really know what you're doing, you should just get a linux. 

[Eigen]

2 hours ago, samman1994 said:

Check to see what everyone else has. In the sciences, most people actually have pcs, and we will often times share files that are made in Microsoft Office, and Macs struggle with formatting or opening said files. We had a person in our lab who had a mac, and they had problems all the time with files to send us, or files we sent her. Personally, from what I know, everything you can do with a mac you can do with a pc, with the exception of the arts (film, music, editing, etc.). PC has the benefit that you can modify it and use it for other things (if you know what you're doing). If you really know what you're doing, you should just get a linux. 

I think you're over-generalizing what "most" people do in the sciences.

In my current Chemistry department, it's about a 50:50 split, with the edge slightly to Macs. In my graduate chemistry department, it was slightly more Macs than PCs. In the bio programs I collaborate with, Macs are more common than PCs. 

In my current school's Science division as a whole, there are definitely more Macs than PCs. 

There are definitely Mac/PC issues in Office, but that's why people upthread are recommending that the OP wait and see what their research group uses. For instance, when I started grad school I had a PC, and had to switch to Mac because that was the prevalent OS. 

As to some of your more direct comparisons, keep this in mind: You can run Windows on a Mac, but (for the most part) you can't run OSX on a PC. Technically, that makes getting a Mac the "safer" bet if you don't know what colleagues will be using, since you can always take your Mac, install Windows, and remove any potential compatibility issues.

[Sigaba]

On 6/13/2017 at 6:48 AM, tonydoesmovie said:

Refurbished through Apple store? Or through another vendor?

There are reputable vendors that I would trust such as Newegg and CDW. The sales taxes could be less and that would add to your savings.

8 hours ago, TakeruK said:

. Because of that, there's no point getting the top of the line laptop for a regular user, since your laptop could fall apart physically before its hardware becomes obsolete.

I think that would depend upon the brand and the model. Computers built for corporate use are likely to be better built and have more durable (if not more capable) components than similar machines built for everyday consumers and sold at Costco.

[Eigen]

That's one of the reasons older macs were so reliable- they tended to use server grade components as opposed to, as you say, Costco grade. 

The benefit of an apple refurbished one is that it comes with the same warranty as a new one- a lot of other places can't (or won't) do the same. 

[samman1994]

11 hours ago, Eigen said:

I think you're over-generalizing what "most" people do in the sciences.

In my current Chemistry department, it's about a 50:50 split, with the edge slightly to Macs. In my graduate chemistry department, it was slightly more Macs than PCs. In the bio programs I collaborate with, Macs are more common than PCs. 

In my current school's Science division as a whole, there are definitely more Macs than PCs. 

There are definitely Mac/PC issues in Office, but that's why people upthread are recommending that the OP wait and see what their research group uses. For instance, when I started grad school I had a PC, and had to switch to Mac because that was the prevalent OS. 

As to some of your more direct comparisons, keep this in mind: You can run Windows on a Mac, but (for the most part) you can't run OSX on a PC. Technically, that makes getting a Mac the "safer" bet if you don't know what colleagues will be using, since you can always take your Mac, install Windows, and remove any potential compatibility issues.

Well then it may just vary, in both our Chemistry and Biochemistry department for my undergrad, it was almost entirely PC. When I worked at caltech, most of the people in the structural and biophysical department also had PCs. If you want to go for the "safest" bet, you can always get a linux system. Running OS is incredibly simple since the main coding is similar to linux, getting it to format windows is a bit trickier, but doable as well. Again, my main advice would just be to see what everyone else, and go with that due to reasons stated earlier. 

[Psychologyandpizza]

Im in my second year of a masters program in Psychological research and have had my MacBook Pro since my junior year of high school (2011) and it still runs really well. The only time it starts running slowly is when I have many many SPSS files open in addition to large docs and PDFs, which really, it isn't often I have  that many files of that size open at once. Granted, I bought mine for about $1,000 at the time and am not looking forward to the day I need a new laptop. In terms of the quality, I always say I'll probably be an Apple person for life because of this. But like everyone has said, it really depends on your preferences, program, field etc.

[Clinpsyc01]

My advisor is purchasing a Mac laptop for me, and I'm looking for some input on my options. I can choose from MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and MacBook. Does anyone have any recommendations? 

For reference, I'm in a psychology program and will be using the computer for paper writing, reading, data analysis, etc- nothing that requires a ton of power. 

 

[Eigen]

I love the portability of my air, but I have a desktop at work that balances it out. 

I think power wise you'll be fine with a newer model 13" air, and they have the best battery life of the lineup.

I would personally invest in a good monitor for work/home so you have a bigger screen to work on when you need it. I use dual 24" monitors at work and love the room for writing and analysis- I can tile 4 full size documents easily. 

[TakeruK]

On 8/19/2017 at 10:02 AM, hsnl said:

My advisor is purchasing a Mac laptop for me, and I'm looking for some input on my options. I can choose from MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and MacBook. Does anyone have any recommendations? 

For reference, I'm in a psychology program and will be using the computer for paper writing, reading, data analysis, etc- nothing that requires a ton of power. 

 

Is this the only computer you will be using for ALL of your work? If so, I'd second Eigen's suggestion of getting a big monitor. In addition, I recommend an external hard drive to use as a time machine backup, getting apple-care, an external keyboard and an external mouse. From my experience, working for long periods of time on a laptop at a desk creates very poor posture and tons of ergonomic problems. If you're using it for all of your work, I highly recommend getting everything else so that you can have a proper keyboard/mouse setup and when you're at your desk, you basically just plug your computer into your monitor and turn it into a desktop. 

I'm assuming you have some budget to spend, so I would say you should first prioritize getting these accessories! I think they will do way more for your quality of life and productivity than the specifics between Pro vs Air, for example. Once you have budgeted for these necessities (in my opinion), then just get the best computer you can get with the leftover funds. There's quite a big price point between Air and Pro, so unless you have a $2000+ budget, you will probably be looking at the Air. (In that case, I'd recommend the higher end Air with a better processor and larger hard drive). 

[Clinpsyc01]

On 2017-08-19 at 3:48 PM, Eigen said:

I love the portability of my air, but I have a desktop at work that balances it out. 

I think power wise you'll be fine with a newer model 13" air, and they have the best battery life of the lineup.

I would personally invest in a good monitor for work/home so you have a bigger screen to work on when you need it. I use dual 24" monitors at work and love the room for writing and analysis- I can tile 4 full size documents easily. 

 

5 hours ago, TakeruK said:

Is this the only computer you will be using for ALL of your work? If so, I'd second Eigen's suggestion of getting a big monitor. In addition, I recommend an external hard drive to use as a time machine backup, getting apple-care, an external keyboard and an external mouse. From my experience, working for long periods of time on a laptop at a desk creates very poor posture and tons of ergonomic problems. If you're using it for all of your work, I highly recommend getting everything else so that you can have a proper keyboard/mouse setup and when you're at your desk, you basically just plug your computer into your monitor and turn it into a desktop. 

I'm assuming you have some budget to spend, so I would say you should first prioritize getting these accessories! I think they will do way more for your quality of life and productivity than the specifics between Pro vs Air, for example. Once you have budgeted for these necessities (in my opinion), then just get the best computer you can get with the leftover funds. There's quite a big price point between Air and Pro, so unless you have a $2000+ budget, you will probably be looking at the Air. (In that case, I'd recommend the higher end Air with a better processor and larger hard drive). 

Thank you both for the suggestions!