What laptop is your kid taking to college?

[Anonymous]

We’re giving DD a laptop as a graduation gift. She’s an aspiring biology major and will be attending a SLAC. Are MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs the way to go? Or a Microsoft Surface? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

At some universities, specific departments/majors have guidance on which laptop to get. I’d check with her specific school.

[Anonymous]

The new mac airs are much better than before and so really good. Have many of the pro advantages and are much lighter.

[Anonymous]

Some sort of Mac. Haven't decided which yet.

[Anonymous]

We are a Mac family. To save money one year, though, and because it looked good, we bought a Surface Pro for DC. It worked well for about a month before the programs started slowing down and became difficult to operate.

Never again.

The Macs have come a long way since my first Mac in 1984 (carrying it around the airport in a bag the size of an ice chest)!

[Anonymous]

Likely getting my DD a Mac Book Pro. If you wait until summer they usually have offers for college students that include free Beats or similar.

[Anonymous]

Waiting to see what the requirements of the college are and what sort of deal buying through the college gets us. Probably not a Mac because he's going into engineering.

Shoutout to 23:37 -- that was my brother's first computer, too! I loved how the brochure emphasized its portability.

[Anonymous]

The same MacBook Pro DC has been using in high school.

[Anonymous]

Echoing previous comments, have your daughter look up her college's computing services and their recommendations before purchasing anything.

[Anonymous]

My DD took a MacBook Air - she's had it for 5+ years now.

DS doesn't like Macs and got an ASUS Zenbook with much better specs and a graphics card for about the same price as a MacBook Air.

[Anonymous]

My DD got a Dell latitude laptop that was just discontinued. Loves it and takes all the abuse of college life very well.

[Anonymous]

Macbook Air.

[Anonymous]

Thinkpad that they have used a while.

[Anonymous]

Oldest son has a Surface Book 2. He sometimes take handwritten notes, and the tablet feature is great (probably would be useful for a classes that require drawing, e.g., biology, chemistry).

My other son just got a Dell XPS touch screen. It doesn't have the easy note taking features as a surface, but it allows him to mark up PDF or other document with a pen.

[Anonymous]

OP. Check out the Lenovo Carbon X1 line if you end up going the PC route. I was a Dell user for 20+ years but their quality has been dropping so would advice against them.

HP Spectre and Asus Zenbooks are supposed to be good as well but no personal experience with either.

Macbooks work perfectly fine for Engineering/CS. We have kids in our extended family that are/were in Engineering programs at Georgia Tech, UIUC, CWRU and Stanford that use Apple laptops (Macbook Pros). Two of these kids are in CS.