Computer for Med School

[StarryNight]

Wittybitty, what is more important for you, a beautiful screen (Retina MBP 13") or portability (Macbook Air)?

 

Battery life (Macbook Air) or performance (Retina MBP 13")?

 

Price (Macbook Air)?

 

If you're just taking notes, writing papers, checking email, and surfing the Internet, then don't worry about performance as either has more than enough power for the typical student use case. I recommend basing your decision on on price, portability, and screen quality. Choose the most important criteria and pick the one that matches your priorities.

[wittybitty]

Wittybitty, what is more important for you, a beautiful screen (Retina MBP 13") or portability (Macbook Air)?

 

Battery life (Macbook Air) or performance (Retina MBP 13")?

 

Price (Macbook Air)?

 

If you're just taking notes, writing papers, checking email, and surfing the Internet, then don't worry about performance as either has more than enough power for the typical student use case. I recommend basing your decision on on price, portability, and screen quality. Choose the most important criteria and pick the one that matches your priorities.

 

Ya I'm trying to balance between battery life vs weight vs screen quality. I wonder how big a difference the screen quality is between the air and the pro. If I'm spending a long time reading notes/lectures on my computer I guess the better screen quality would be easier on the eyes.

[goodyearkl]

Ya I'm trying to balance between battery life vs weight vs screen quality. I wonder how big a difference the screen quality is between the air and the pro. If I'm spending a long time reading notes/lectures on my computer I guess the better screen quality would be easier on the eyes.

 

Not a huge difference in screen quality. You might be better off with the air for portability reasons.

[futurepediatric]

Ya I'm trying to balance between battery life vs weight vs screen quality. I wonder how big a difference the screen quality is between the air and the pro. If I'm spending a long time reading notes/lectures on my computer I guess the better screen quality would be easier on the eyes.

 

I have the air and trust me, your back will be forever grateful if you got the air . I don't think the screen quality is noticeable at all (I have a lot of friends who have the pro), but if you're worried about that, you can always go to the Apple store and check that out. Having a light laptop makes more of a difference than i initially though - i can literally take my laptop everywhere lol. It feels like the perfect balance between a laptop and iPad.

[futurepediatric]

Wittybitty, what is more important for you, a beautiful screen (Retina MBP 13") or portability (Macbook Air)?

 

Battery life (Macbook Air) or performance (Retina MBP 13")?

 

Price (Macbook Air)?

 

If you're just taking notes, writing papers, checking email, and surfing the Internet, then don't worry about performance as either has more than enough power for the typical student use case. I recommend basing your decision on on price, portability, and screen quality. Choose the most important criteria and pick the one that matches your priorities.

 

Exactly what I was going to say:p

[Hockeynut]

What sort of memory capacity should I be looking for? I will mostly use the laptop for school purposes only.

[chanman82]

What sort of memory capacity should I be looking for? I will mostly use the laptop for school purposes only.

 

4GB is sufficient, but 8GB allows for more multi-tasking and is more "future-proof". 16GB is excessive unless you are using it as a graphic designer or for other memory intensive purposes.

 

I myself am trying to decide between the rMBP and the MBA...it's essentially $200 extra to get the superior screen and a better processor (while sacrificing a bit of portability and batter life). I may end up buying in the US since the base price is cheaper and much less tax. Whatever you do, make sure you get the education pricing!

[schmitty]

Not a huge difference in screen quality. You might be better off with the air for portability reasons.

 

The difference in res and quality of the screens is HUGE IMHO.

 

Though the MBA is a great comp with amazing battery life, the screen is a real downer. Though I would personally not get any Apple computer...but we won't start that debate again.

[Roquentin]

For those of you with the SP3, is it comfortable to hold/carry around? I'm just wondering whether it'll be practical during clerkship or if I should keep my slightly smaller iPad.

 

Been using it pretty heavily for a month now and yes, light enough for me anyway.

 

Also I would second schmitty, I got Office 365 at his/her recommendation today and I am really milking this 1TB cloud storage it's really ideal for students I think, since universities have high speed internet access pretty ubiquitously.

[amc]

Hey everyone, thanks for the info, especially the reviews of the SP3!

 

Just wondering what any of you think of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014? Like many of you I want something that I can take handwritten notes on, but I want something that's more of a tablet than a laptop (the SP3 is too big/heavy for my taste). I tried out both the Note 10.1 and the SP3 in store using the pens and they seemed to work just as well to me, so I'm wondering what the differences are? I wasn't able to try an iPad Air with a stylus in store, but what would be the difference between the say the SP3 and using a stylus with the iPad Air that makes the SP3 better?

[designed]

The difference in res and quality of the screens is HUGE IMHO.

 

Though the MBA is a great comp with amazing battery life, the screen is a real downer. Though I would personally not get any Apple computer...but we won't start that debate again.

 

I have a rMBP 13". Once you go retina, you can't go back... everything just looks pixellated.

[schmitty]

I have a rMBP 13". Once you go retina, you can't go back... everything just looks pixellated.

 

Haha...yes, high res is great, but Apple is not the only one, and is not even the leader in this regard. "retina" is just a marketing term for Apple's high resolution screens (not made by Apple, btw). For example, pretty well all new smartphones have much higher resolutions than the iPhone, there are several tablets with higher res than the iPod and MANY ultrabooks/laptops with hiogher res than the "retina" displays in the MBP.

 

1080P or above on a tablet device is more than enough when the display is otherwise high quality. The surface pro 3 has a very high res screen at 2160 x 1440 which is roughly the same pixel density as the MacBook Pros.

[schmitty]

Oh, and if you are worried about even higher resolution than the MBP, there are several laptops out with 3200x1800 resolution and are much lighter and thinner than the MBP...such as the Samsung ATIV book 9 plus (terrible naming...lol)

[Arztin]

Guys, surface pro 3 > everything else.

[Sarvish]

Guys, surface pro 3 > everything else.

 

After spending a little time playing with my SP3, I agree. 

[goodyearkl]

After spending a little time playing with my SP3, I agree. 

I'll third that. I love my SP3.

[rbt]

Looks like I'm going to jump aboard the SP3-for-med-school hypetrain and finally buy one.

[Aetherus]

The first problem that many found was image ghosting. If you left an image on the screen long enough and then went to a blank screen you would see a ghost of the original image. This can be a problem if you're editing photos or videos, or frankly if you just want a perfect screen (and you generally buy these laptops for the perfect screen). The people who traded in for a new laptop based on manufacturer's defect then received a screen that had a yellowish tint to it that could not be corrected by color calibration systems like Spyder.

This happened to me. There is also picel bursting that make little dents in your screen. I have changed my screen a total of three times (on the warranty) on my macbook pro retina. I have also changed the keyboard/battery pack part of the laptop once.

[StarryNight]

Guys, surface pro 3 > everything else.

Arztin is correct, SP3 is the best current choice for medical school!

[Roquentin]

My 2-month update is that the SP3 still holds up.

 

One more downside I didn't include in my original review was that the resolution is way too high to use this comfortably with the windows desktop if you hate reading small (icons look very small, though you get more screen realestate). One kind-of solution to this is to go into Display Settings and increase the zoom to about 150%, but it leaves some screen elements a bit pixelated. I ended up getting a 23in HD monitor and a minidisplay port -> HDMI/VGA adapter and together they look great, but you can't carry that everywhere. Hopefully Microsoft patches up the desktop interface to optimize it for pixel density this high on a screen this small. As a sidenote though, high pixel density is perfect for the new windows 8 metro interface.

 

One more upside is that with Office 365 being so cheap for students, and that it comes with 1TB of cloud storage, of which files can be selectively made available offline or online only, nearly all my storage fears are taken care of on my 128GB version and eliminated the need for other cloud storage solutions. 

[jmatt1122]

Can't get behind the SP3 bandwagon, myself. I tried it with an open mind, but couldn't arrive at a reliable and simple workflow for notes/PDF annotation which was my biggest turnoff.

 

OneNote was alright... but the way it inserts PDFs is annoying, I think. Also I don't know that I'd trust that one 'notebook' file with all my notes to not get corrupted one day and screw me over. Crossplatform integration (particularly iOS/OS X) was hardly functional.

 

Also couldn't find a decent PDF annotator that did everything I wanted it to do. One was almost perfect... but it kept crashing on me and didn't have any file-management/library features (don't want to have to click back to the file explorer to open the next set of notes). 

 

iPad is the solution for me when it comes to notes, and my Mac for more powerful stuff I guess. There are a bunch of great apps that offer great annotation, storage/management of files, and remote backup to services like Dropbox/iCloud/Google Drive (which make access on my phone, Mac, or anywhere else for that matter a breeze). I also have a great stylus I'm happy with (Adonit Jot Pro). More expensive, definitely, but I guess maybe this is what I'm used to. Wanted to be converted (primarily because of the amazing writing experience of the SP3 with the digitizer pen), but didn't quite get there. Just felt I should post this for anyone still undecided and looking for an alternate opinion.

[jmatt1122]

 

Went to make an edit and another post was made? Also now I can't figure out how to delete a post on the new software? Haha this must lend so much credibility to my comments on the SP3/iPad situation.

[rbt]

Can't stop the hypetrain, jmatt. It already left the station.

 

Really, though, it's always good to hear dissenting opinions on a $1200+ purchase.

[Rorzo]

Can't get behind the SP3 bandwagon, myself. I tried it with an open mind, but couldn't arrive at a reliable and simple workflow for notes/PDF annotation which was my biggest turnoff.

 

OneNote was alright... but the way it inserts PDFs is annoying, I think. Also I don't know that I'd trust that one 'notebook' file with all my notes to not get corrupted one day and screw me over. Crossplatform integration (particularly iOS/OS X) was hardly functional.

 

Also couldn't find a decent PDF annotator that did everything I wanted it to do. One was almost perfect... but it kept crashing on me and didn't have any file-management/library features (don't want to have to click back to the file explorer to open the next set of notes). 

 

iPad is the solution for me when it comes to notes, and my Mac for more powerful stuff I guess. There are a bunch of great apps that offer great annotation, storage/management of files, and remote backup to services like Dropbox/iCloud/Google Drive (which make access on my phone, Mac, or anywhere else for that matter a breeze). I also have a great stylus I'm happy with (Adonit Jot Pro). More expensive, definitely, but I guess maybe this is what I'm used to. Wanted to be converted (primarily because of the amazing writing experience of the SP3 with the digitizer pen), but didn't quite get there. Just felt I should post this for anyone still undecided and looking for an alternate opinion.

 

Just wanted to chime in with some potential solutions here. I'm using Onedrive to back up my Onenote, 1TB of cloud storage with the student version office and it provides a solid back up in case a hard drive on one of my devices fails or gets corrupted. In addition my Onenote notebooks are synced pretty much instantaneously between my desktop, SP3 and iPad. It does suck that the iOS Onenote doesn't really support annotating though, that's a definite downside if you're looking to go cross-platform. For a PDF annotator I highly recommend Drawboard PDF, unless that's the one that keeps crashing on you

 

I'm sorry the SP3 didn't work out for you (I'm fully on the bandwagon myself) but there's really a ton of phenomenal devices out there and your iPad/Mac combo is probably going to be awesome anyways.

[ArchEnemy]

Can't get behind the SP3 bandwagon, myself. I tried it with an open mind, but couldn't arrive at a reliable and simple workflow for notes/PDF annotation which was my biggest turnoff.

 

OneNote was alright... but the way it inserts PDFs is annoying, I think. Also I don't know that I'd trust that one 'notebook' file with all my notes to not get corrupted one day and screw me over. Crossplatform integration (particularly iOS/OS X) was hardly functional.

 

Also couldn't find a decent PDF annotator that did everything I wanted it to do. One was almost perfect... but it kept crashing on me and didn't have any file-management/library features (don't want to have to click back to the file explorer to open the next set of notes). 

 

iPad is the solution for me when it comes to notes, and my Mac for more powerful stuff I guess. There are a bunch of great apps that offer great annotation, storage/management of files, and remote backup to services like Dropbox/iCloud/Google Drive (which make access on my phone, Mac, or anywhere else for that matter a breeze). I also have a great stylus I'm happy with (Adonit Jot Pro). More expensive, definitely, but I guess maybe this is what I'm used to. Wanted to be converted (primarily because of the amazing writing experience of the SP3 with the digitizer pen), but didn't quite get there. Just felt I should post this for anyone still undecided and looking for an alternate opinion.

 

I share the same sentiments - don't like to have to import PDFs into OneNote, then export it back out if I want to view it on my iPad. I didn't like the user interface on Drawboard PDF either.

 

What PDF app do you use on your iPad?