I'll be starting college this fall (just finished high school), and need/want a better computer, but I'm not sure what I should be looking for. I'm currently an undeclared engineering major; I'm deciding between electrical and mechanical engineering. I'm willing to pay around $1000 and am looking to get something relatively high-end - I don't plan on gaming, but I do intend to run CAD programs and hopefully audio production stuff as well.
Would it be better to get a laptop or a desktop? Or both? Or one of those and a tablet? A laptop is nice in that its portable, but hauling $1000 around campus is somewhat worrisome to me and laptops are harder to service and more likely to break than desktops. Would it even be that helpful to have a computer (or tablet) with me in class sometimes? A desktop would be cheaper and more reliable, but then I have to have a monitor and transporting it between school and home (2500 miles) would be a pain and I can't take it anywhere easily, obviously. I'm leaning towards building a desktop, and considering getting a decent laptop or tablet as well (I'd likely wait for a week or two into school to see if more than a desktop would be necessary).
As far as specs, I'm looking for a quad core Intel i5 or i7, 8+ GB ram, 500+ GB HDD and smaller SSD, and low to mid level gaming graphics card. I suspect I'll be running Windows 7 or 10 most of the time, but will likely dual boot with Linux. Does that seem reasonable?
Thanks!
Would it be better to get a laptop or a desktop? Or both? Or one of those and a tablet? A laptop is nice in that its portable, but hauling $1000 around campus is somewhat worrisome to me and laptops are harder to service and more likely to break than desktops. Would it even be that helpful to have a computer (or tablet) with me in class sometimes? A desktop would be cheaper and more reliable, but then I have to have a monitor and transporting it between school and home (2500 miles) would be a pain and I can't take it anywhere easily, obviously. I'm leaning towards building a desktop, and considering getting a decent laptop or tablet as well (I'd likely wait for a week or two into school to see if more than a desktop would be necessary).
As far as specs, I'm looking for a quad core Intel i5 or i7, 8+ GB ram, 500+ GB HDD and smaller SSD, and low to mid level gaming graphics card. I suspect I'll be running Windows 7 or 10 most of the time, but will likely dual boot with Linux. Does that seem reasonable?
Thanks!