Laptops for Biomedical Science

[FailedScientist]

Hi Guys,

I know there are already a few threads on this but I couldn't find anything that is particularly current/relevant for my situation. I am looking into buying a new laptop soon after my coursework year at gradschool (in around 6 months time). Would mainly need it for office, running bioinformatics software, possibly for some data heavy work (genomics/proteomics work). I've been leaning towards an macbook air hopefully with an i7 and 512gb ssd or an asus model with similar specs. I've never owned a mac but have used some. My main reason for leaning that way is durability. I've gotten tired of my pcs slowing down after a year or so of use and I hear that macs work better for longer, with the sacrifice of better specs for the price point. I plan on waiting and discussing it with people in the lab I eventually join as well to make sure I don't have any compatibility issues. Would love to get some feedback from the older and wiser.

Thanks!

[samman1994]

12 minutes ago, FailedScientist said:

Hi Guys,

I know there are already a few threads on this but I couldn't find anything that is particularly current/relevant for my situation. I am looking into buying a new laptop soon after my coursework year at gradschool (in around 6 months time). Would mainly need it for office, running bioinformatics software, possibly for some data heavy work (genomics/proteomics work). I've been leaning towards an macbook air hopefully with an i7 and 512gb ssd or an asus model with similar specs. I've never owned a mac but have used some. My main reason for leaning that way is durability. I've gotten tired of my pcs slowing down after a year or so of use and I hear that macs work better for longer, with the sacrifice of better specs for the price point. I plan on waiting and discussing it with people in the lab I eventually join as well to make sure I don't have any compatibility issues. Would love to get some feedback from the older and wiser.

Thanks!

I worked in proteomics computational lab for a couple years. Most software I worked with wasn't even designed for windows/macs but for linux. If you know what you're doing, you could run them on macs or windows theoretically. I don't know about macs, but windows are a pain to work via the terminal (compared to linux), so would really advise against running any software not designed for it. In regards to running actual bioinformatics software, I assume your lab already has good computers to use? Your computer has nice specs, but some bioinformatic software is very heavy, and still wouldn't be enough for your computer (I used to use a cluster of 32 to 128 cores sometimes for some programs depending on how heavy the workload was). Now I personally never used software on my own computer (my computer sucks), but my PI used to run programs all the time on her laptop, and she owned a windows computer (don't know the specs, but I recall her getting upset because the only laptops that had her specs were expensive gaming laptops, so you can get a general gist of what she was going for), and she never had problems on it. Again, important to note, she wasn't able to run a lot of programs because they weren't designed for windows. I don't know what programs your labs use, but just thought you should keep that in mind, and actually ask you PI if the programs you guys use are compatible with macs in the first place. 

Edited August 30, 2017 by samman1994