Honest reccommendation needed..

[StaticFX]

My son starts college soon (8/20) and we have been planning on getting him a laptop for it.
He is taking New Media Design, so said laptop needs to run Adobe Creative Cloud.

Obviously many people jump right to "Oh you MUST get a mac. I know macs are great (even though over priced imo) and geared toward artists/designers etc.. But I am leaning toward the Surface simply for the fact that it has the pen/touchscreen and its super thin, light, and all around pretty cool lol

General use seems to be great on both (notes, docs, etc) so that can get thrown to the side..

So it comes to the art.. who has a surface for art and do you love it? any issues?

Side note/question: what can be done for security software - like anything for locating it/locking it etc (like you can with ipads etc)

Thanks!

 

[Sparro]

My son started University last year. He is in Computer Systems Engineering. Architecture and Design are under the Engineering umbrella. They were told to not gets Macs if possible because there are some specialized programs they will use that won't run correctly on Macs and they will experience difficulties using the software with a Mac. He says there were about six people using Surface Pro 4s with no issues. I was gonna get my son a SP4 last year for school but he wanted to be able to do some gaming as well so I ended up getting him a Razer Blade 14 which runs everything with ease.

 

[StaticFX]

ok thanks. He has a good desktop if he wants to game, so i figured the Surface could be just for "work" - watching some videos I see it running creative cloud nicely so thats cool.

 

[convergent]

My son starts college soon (8/20) and we have been planning on getting him a laptop for it.
He is taking New Media Design, so said laptop needs to run Adobe Creative Cloud.

Obviously many people jump right to "Oh you MUST get a mac. I know macs are great (even though over priced imo) and geared toward artists/designers etc.. But I am leaning toward the Surface simply for the fact that it has the pen/touchscreen and its super thin, light, and all around pretty cool lol

General use seems to be great on both (notes, docs, etc) so that can get thrown to the side..

So it comes to the art.. who has a surface for art and do you love it? any issues?

Side note/question: what can be done for security software - like anything for locating it/locking it etc (like you can with ipads etc)

Thanks!

You started with "my son starts college" and then jumped to "I am leaning toward...". This is your son's college, not yours, so I'd encourage you to let him start to do some of this himself. You may prefer Windows over Mac, but if the school is geared toward supporting Mac, then he may have a lot of trouble when you aren't around. My daughter is a senior in Graphics Design and she said that she feels sad for the couple of students that are using Windows because they are all on their own when they have problems. All the professors, IT support, and most of the students are all on Macs.

My daughter didn't need to buy a high end laptop until the end of her sophomore year, because all the classes up until that point were not heavy design courses. I let her use my retired MacBook Air for most of the first two years so she could learn what she liked (size, form factor, weight, etc..). This gave her a chance to see what the lay of the land was, what others were using, and also to delay the purchase so that it would last her longer into post college career than if she bought it as a freshman.

In the end, she got a 15" MacBook Pro which is nothing I would have ever bought.... but it is what she wanted. My sole contribution was helping her pick which model, driving to the Apple store, and surprising her with a "dollar matching" deal when she got there. I also got here an LG 4k display that could double as a monitor for DVDs and cable in her dorm/apartment and helping her get that working. Otherwise, she's pretty much managed setting it up and using it based on the support she got from school.

Also, Macs have a great "find my mac" capability built in.

 

[xandros9]

I would go to the university and see what they recommend for a given program.

I would also take the following into account:

- Can it be easily repaired? (MacBook Airs and Surfaces can't, and things go wrong - I've taken a call from a fellow student who spilled beer on her Pro, not pretty.)
- What brands does the on-campus IT desk support for repair? (if there is one)
- What does the school recommend? (e.g. graphic design leans towards Macs, business towards Windows, CS lab computers are Linux...)

 

[anon(50597)]

I would go to the university and see what they recommend for a given program.

I would also take the following into account:

- Can it be easily repaired? (MacBook Airs and Surfaces can't, and things go wrong - I've taken a call from a fellow student who spilled beer on her Pro, not pretty.)
- What brands does the on-campus IT desk support for repair? (if there is one)
- What does the school recommend? (e.g. graphic design leans towards Macs, business towards Windows, CS lab computers are Linux...)

Exactly this. Every school is different. Find out what they recommend and support. It will make school a lot easier.

 

[dirtyvu]

At our school, Windows is dominant. Find out what her program prefers
In most cases, schools are pretty agnostic.