Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: Choosing a Laptop To Support Physics Research?

Posted by timothy on from the budget-for-replacement-too dept.

An anonymous reader writes My daughter is in her third year of college as a physics major. She has an internship in Europe this summer, will graduate next year, and continue with graduate physics studies. Her area of research interest is in gravitational waves and particle physics. She currently has a laptop running Win7 and wants to buy a new laptop. She would like to use Linux on it, and plans to use it for C++ programming, data analysis and simulations (along with the usual email, surfing, music, pictures, etc). For all of the physics-savvy Slashdotters out there: what should she get? PC? Mac? What do you recommend for running Linux? For a C++ development environment? What laptop do you use and how is it configured to support your physics-related activities? Do you have a question to Ask Slashdot? Fire away, with details, using our submissions form.

5 of 385 comments (clear)

  1. Anything... by x0ra · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would she need anything specific ? Any entry level laptop will have more CPU and GPU capability to do whatever she's gonna be asked. I doubt she will end up doing fine-grained world-wide weather simulation or end up requiring building Chromium from source. Hardware-spec wise, this is a pointless question... As for PC/Mac, it is also pointless. You buy Apple-branded products if you want all the Apple coziness and conviviality of OS X, the underlying machine is pretty much identical...

    1. Re:Anything... by dannybackx · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I disagree. From the question, you'll see she wants to do development work, and also run other compute intensive tasks (data analysis and simulations).
      In my opinion, "anything" is not the right choice then. Go with at least a decent (4 core) i5 processor, or an i7.

  2. What do her colleagues use? by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Does she want to / need to run the same software as her colleagues? If so, then the answer is an easy one.....

  3. Parent is right. by evilbessie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Local knowledge is key, so it'd be better to find out what everyone else uses and get the same. Research packages are quite often poorly written and documented, so having people who've fixed the problems already is helpful.

    Note: I work at a research university doing IT support.

  4. Re:no grad school by polyphemus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    +1

    Source: I spent 7 years of my life getting a Ph.D. in physics. By the time I got the Ph.D., the only reason left I had for finishing was because I'd started.

    A Master's in physics, though, that's legit. You're still having fun, and still learning a lot.