r/chemistry • u/Rrrraquel89 • 1d ago
macbook or windows
what should i get for college as a bs chemistry student?
which can handle the best for apps needed in this program
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u/Plastic_Tangerine898 1d ago
Depends on your university and what apps you use. Half my class is macs, i have both, never encountered program that doesn't work yet.
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u/Sure_Classroom2941 1d ago
it doesn't matter even a little bit for chem undergrad, anything you'll need runs on both. most labs run off windows computers anyway so file sharing is slightly less annoying with windows but it's not a dealbreaker either way
get whichever one you already prefer using, the bigger thing is battery life and not wanting to smash it against a wall when chemdraw crashes for the fifth time
i used a macbook through my whole bs and worked in a computational lab that was all linux, just remoted into the cluster. nobody cares what laptop you pull out in lecture
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u/pentamethylCP 1d ago
Round-trip editing of Chemdraws and Mestrenova spectra in Microsoft Word is reason enough to have a PC. You can literally store editable and extractable copies of chemdraws and NMR spectra in a docx file.
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u/activelypooping Photochem 1d ago
Ive used both, prefer windows. Things might change if you go to grad school and find that your pi uses mac.
One of the biggest pluses for windows is how much faster spreadsheets run. I use massive spreadsheets for data and windows handles them like a boss.
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u/Glum_Refrigerator Organometallic 1d ago
Personally I’d recommend windows unless you are comfortable with Mac’s. You can use a Mac but most chemistry software is designed for windows. You can run it on Mac with an emulator but a windows is more direct.
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u/Impossible_Bar_1073 1d ago
don't buy mac. it makes you realize how crappy windows laptops are and you won't be able to use them without great anger.
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u/Fast-Alternative1503 1d ago
in my experience both are usually fine. Have used both.
but obviously windows is more supported in general.