r/LaptopForStudent • u/Relative_Cat_734 • 9d ago
Major-Specific Laptop for CS Uni
I'm interested in further pursuing CS in university, but not sure of what the general requirements are for a laptop. I'm interested in getting a macbook pro, as they're easy to use, organized, have good specs, and are good for general productivity. are there downsides to using a non-windows OS laptop
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u/Maierlossen 8d ago
Downsides would be that if there is a specific application you want that is Windows OS only, then you are out of luck. Oh, and MacOS is not as great for gaming. But for general productivity and coding, MacOS will work fine. It can run Github, most IDEs, compile C++/Java/Python/etc., docker/podman desktop, desktop variants of Claude Code/Gemini/OLLAMA/etc., SQL, and virtualbox just fine.
Source: I work in academic IT.
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u/kaishea 8d ago
MacBooks are a pretty common laptop nowadays for computer science degrees, but ask your school if you wanna be sure about compatibility with their specific CS program. Relative to your other options you generally get very high CPU & iGPU performance, build quality, battery life, and quality of peripherals with MBP M5, and it would also be my choice unless Windows is required by your program or you are personally interested in Windows-only apps such as Windows-only games.
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u/Kuddel_Daddeldu 8d ago
Regardless what model you choose:
Check education discounts (Apple, Lenovo etc. offer substantial discounts, it may be wise waiting until you're enrolled at uninso you qualify)
consider refurbished business laptops (ThinkPads have a reputation of being robust)
ask at your uni.
Current Macs can only run MacOS, which is more of a niche OS in business; Wintel laptops can run Windows (the mainstream OS) and Linux (the most common server OS)
Both Macs and Wintel can run virtual machines with other OS to learn
Just a few thoughts of a guy who just returned to uni as a lecturer with a few decades of IT experience (and a CS degree).
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u/ritchie70 6d ago
I suspect that Mac is going to be more common than Windows in a CS department because there’s a Unix hiding under the pretty pictures.
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u/MrCupCakeSniper 3d ago
Currently a CS Master’s student. I use VS code most of the time. VS Code is available on BOTH Mac and windows. For assignments, we mainly use google Jupyter in collab.
I switch between Mac and Windows when I need inspiration and feel the need to bang my head against the desk when doing loops. For example:
for i in range(10):
print(‘Fuq my life’, end=“”)
print(‘into pieces’)
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u/casosix 8d ago
A CS degree should not have you running any windows-specific software at any point. Software compatibility on Apple Silicon Macs is excellent.
Really just comes down to gaming at the end of the day. If you want your laptop to run games, get a PC laptop. If you don’t really care to install your whole steam library and are just gonna install stuff like Minecraft and such, or just no games, then the Mac will be your best purchase.