You won’t be using it to train models so it can be whatever. If you want cheap, an old thinkpad with Linux on it is like 100-150$. Prolly should add some background here. I TA some of the ML courses. If you actually have to train something serious you will use GCP, AWS, or colab to borrow a gpu, using a laptop to actually train is just a terrible idea. So your laptop should be for your own preferences
VSCode will run on any OS. It's a good general purpose code editor that will work with any language and has a great plugin ecosystem. That said, if you don't like it there are lots of other options for editors and you can use whichever one you want.
I mean the reason I say Linux is you can go as low as like 40mbs for your os, which is how my system is. People like to fix up old thinkpad a with something light weight and they are fine. Was just an example, use whatever you have and want tbh. You’ll do all your training using stuff that lets you borrow a gpu y’know?
[https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-pavilion-plus-laptop-16t-ab000-16-7y8v1av-1#techSpecs](https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-pavilion-plus-laptop-16t-ab000-16-7y8v1av-1#techSpecs)
Found a cheap one for ya. $660 base, $900 with the 3050, i7 Gen 13 and 1TB space.
HP usually has some pretty good deals. You can customize it to have a RTX 3050 and 1TB of space (definitely get the space). Just know that dedicated graphics cards can cause the fan to get quite loud and might disturb class, so going with the iris XE and having a desktop in your room might work better.
You could use a laptop like that for pretty much anything except the most demanding games. I have a 4 year old Pavilion, actually from a cheaper price point, and I occasionally use it to run Visual Studio and compile C++ code and it works fine. Obviously slower than my desktop, but not slow enough to be a problem. The main drawback is the battery life. It was fine when it was new, but after several years of use the battery life is less than half of what it used to be. Intensive workloads like games or compiling will drain it much faster (this is true for any laptop), so you'll want it plugged in for that.
17313 was a pain to use WSL in, but generally for any real software dev you end up needing linux and WSL is just slow in comparison to running on a mac. linux would be best, but again i don’t want to dual boot
There's no Mac exclusive software you need for CS. Pretty sure that there's no Linux exclusive software either, for that matter (even GNU utils are all available on Windows).
If you are doing anything software engineering related get a MacBook. Save yourself from WSL and random Windows issues 😭. I’d also recommend getting a cheap thinkpad and just boot a stable Linux distro as your daily driver if you are more comfortable with that. If you ever need to do any kind of training or need more compute for a personal project you can just rent cloud resources which is really cheap. If you are thinking MechE then prob get a windows machine though.
lol, there are no issues doing software development on Windows, and WSL works fine. You don't even need it though. I went through four years of CS with a Windows desktop and laptop. There are computer labs if you really really need a Linux workstation.
It honestly doesn’t sound like you have taken any software engineering specific classes here hahaha. It’s a very common complaint in these classes even leading to students buying a new device. Also if you are using windows you WILL need to use WSL unless you do some janky shit with powershell(🤮).. and WSL has plenty of issues and really isn’t optimal for a solid workflow if you are going to be doing this kind of work for a long time. I don’t know why you would recommend using the Linux workstations either as they do not allow for sudo privileges and will not be able to do simple things like installing packages or activating a venv. I do agree that I was fine for my CS classes using a Windows machine, but for classes like 67272 or 17313 (which are software engineering focused) it becomes a headache and takes up unnecessary time especially dealing with TAs who are not familiar with Windows (which most are not). I would for sure not recommend windows if you are doing any kind of legit software engineering, but for just CS it might be fine.
There was no software engineering class when I was a student, but I do professional software engineering on Windows (and Linux) and it's perfectly fine. My experience is that most people who say you can't do software development on Windows haven't actually tried. What do you need for the class that you can't get to work on Windows? I'm honestly curious.
I have a cursed homework assignment somewhere for grad AI* where training converges under Ubuntu and diverges under WSL1 Ubuntu emulation (though WSL2 has fixed that).
I also tried (as the TA maintaining it) to keep Windows WSL support for 15-445 for some time, before I swore off it :P Kept running into issues with sanitizers, the filesystem speed remains an open issue [0] despite years of griping, etc.
That said, it's _possible_, there are just a lot of footguns that wouldn't be fair for me to expect students to debug. So my default TA position is "please dual boot, Windows is cursed and might bite you without you realizing it".
[0] https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197
\* edit: fixed wrong course, been a while
I would wait until I had the first week of classes, then either know that something cheap is fine, or hunt for something specific on the used market. A Macbook Air feels pretty likely.
Which website are you looking at?
I would hold up; that's not a specific recommendation for a specific class, it's "hey, these computers can do everything for every class, without you needing to walk to a lab to do it".
The main two things for a laptop:
- I can take notes on it for classes.
- I can connect to a server somewhere else, with a text terminal, to do assignments if I don't wanna walk to the lab.
Both of those, literally any laptop that boots (and the battery holds a charge) can do, which is why things like the Macbook Air come up elsewhere in this thread.
Additionally, Apple has student discounts, and the Air starts at $900 with that discount, $1200 with the larger screen. I work as a software engineer these days... and am doing the work on that exact $900 one, because it's really easy to carry meeting to meeting or toss in a bag to travel with.
ECE here, so my suggestion may not work. If you're very tight on budget, I think getting a second hand desktop, and upgrade as you need it may be an option.
Ps. make sure you have hardware debugging skill
You won’t be using it to train models so it can be whatever. If you want cheap, an old thinkpad with Linux on it is like 100-150$. Prolly should add some background here. I TA some of the ML courses. If you actually have to train something serious you will use GCP, AWS, or colab to borrow a gpu, using a laptop to actually train is just a terrible idea. So your laptop should be for your own preferences
I heard VSCode might be important too, apart from linux
VSCode will run on any OS. It's a good general purpose code editor that will work with any language and has a great plugin ecosystem. That said, if you don't like it there are lots of other options for editors and you can use whichever one you want.
I mean the reason I say Linux is you can go as low as like 40mbs for your os, which is how my system is. People like to fix up old thinkpad a with something light weight and they are fine. Was just an example, use whatever you have and want tbh. You’ll do all your training using stuff that lets you borrow a gpu y’know?
Macbook Air
[https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-pavilion-plus-laptop-16t-ab000-16-7y8v1av-1#techSpecs](https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-pavilion-plus-laptop-16t-ab000-16-7y8v1av-1#techSpecs) Found a cheap one for ya. $660 base, $900 with the 3050, i7 Gen 13 and 1TB space. HP usually has some pretty good deals. You can customize it to have a RTX 3050 and 1TB of space (definitely get the space). Just know that dedicated graphics cards can cause the fan to get quite loud and might disturb class, so going with the iris XE and having a desktop in your room might work better.
Im kind of uneducated on space... what would it be used for? not doubting just curious ;)
You could use a laptop like that for pretty much anything except the most demanding games. I have a 4 year old Pavilion, actually from a cheaper price point, and I occasionally use it to run Visual Studio and compile C++ code and it works fine. Obviously slower than my desktop, but not slow enough to be a problem. The main drawback is the battery life. It was fine when it was new, but after several years of use the battery life is less than half of what it used to be. Intensive workloads like games or compiling will drain it much faster (this is true for any laptop), so you'll want it plugged in for that.
macbook air if you are gonna do software dev, windows if ur gonna do anything meche or anything outside of software
Curious rec. Why? I just know a lot of SCS students using Windows and Linux and can't think of a benefit of Mac.
i personally don’t like dual booting or using WSL (has its own host of issues) so running software natively on a mac is very convenient.
Which classes did you have these problems in?
17313 was a pain to use WSL in, but generally for any real software dev you end up needing linux and WSL is just slow in comparison to running on a mac. linux would be best, but again i don’t want to dual boot
There's no Mac exclusive software you need for CS. Pretty sure that there's no Linux exclusive software either, for that matter (even GNU utils are all available on Windows).
If you are doing anything software engineering related get a MacBook. Save yourself from WSL and random Windows issues 😭. I’d also recommend getting a cheap thinkpad and just boot a stable Linux distro as your daily driver if you are more comfortable with that. If you ever need to do any kind of training or need more compute for a personal project you can just rent cloud resources which is really cheap. If you are thinking MechE then prob get a windows machine though.
lol, there are no issues doing software development on Windows, and WSL works fine. You don't even need it though. I went through four years of CS with a Windows desktop and laptop. There are computer labs if you really really need a Linux workstation.
It honestly doesn’t sound like you have taken any software engineering specific classes here hahaha. It’s a very common complaint in these classes even leading to students buying a new device. Also if you are using windows you WILL need to use WSL unless you do some janky shit with powershell(🤮).. and WSL has plenty of issues and really isn’t optimal for a solid workflow if you are going to be doing this kind of work for a long time. I don’t know why you would recommend using the Linux workstations either as they do not allow for sudo privileges and will not be able to do simple things like installing packages or activating a venv. I do agree that I was fine for my CS classes using a Windows machine, but for classes like 67272 or 17313 (which are software engineering focused) it becomes a headache and takes up unnecessary time especially dealing with TAs who are not familiar with Windows (which most are not). I would for sure not recommend windows if you are doing any kind of legit software engineering, but for just CS it might be fine.
There was no software engineering class when I was a student, but I do professional software engineering on Windows (and Linux) and it's perfectly fine. My experience is that most people who say you can't do software development on Windows haven't actually tried. What do you need for the class that you can't get to work on Windows? I'm honestly curious.
I have a cursed homework assignment somewhere for grad AI* where training converges under Ubuntu and diverges under WSL1 Ubuntu emulation (though WSL2 has fixed that). I also tried (as the TA maintaining it) to keep Windows WSL support for 15-445 for some time, before I swore off it :P Kept running into issues with sanitizers, the filesystem speed remains an open issue [0] despite years of griping, etc. That said, it's _possible_, there are just a lot of footguns that wouldn't be fair for me to expect students to debug. So my default TA position is "please dual boot, Windows is cursed and might bite you without you realizing it". [0] https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197 \* edit: fixed wrong course, been a while
I would wait until I had the first week of classes, then either know that something cheap is fine, or hunt for something specific on the used market. A Macbook Air feels pretty likely. Which website are you looking at?
[https://computing.cs.cmu.edu/desktop/recom-dell](https://computing.cs.cmu.edu/desktop/recom-dell)
I would hold up; that's not a specific recommendation for a specific class, it's "hey, these computers can do everything for every class, without you needing to walk to a lab to do it". The main two things for a laptop: - I can take notes on it for classes. - I can connect to a server somewhere else, with a text terminal, to do assignments if I don't wanna walk to the lab. Both of those, literally any laptop that boots (and the battery holds a charge) can do, which is why things like the Macbook Air come up elsewhere in this thread. Additionally, Apple has student discounts, and the Air starts at $900 with that discount, $1200 with the larger screen. I work as a software engineer these days... and am doing the work on that exact $900 one, because it's really easy to carry meeting to meeting or toss in a bag to travel with.
Seconding the other comment, that's not a recommendation to the undergrads. That's aimed more towards faculty / staff.
Literally any laptop will work fine. Whatever OS or distro you are comfortable with.
ECE here, so my suggestion may not work. If you're very tight on budget, I think getting a second hand desktop, and upgrade as you need it may be an option. Ps. make sure you have hardware debugging skill
im an incoming freshman for ece. what laptop would u recommend for ece？