Best laptops for college students?

Well? What's your price range? We would be able to help you better if you had given your budget. Macbook can be a bit pricey but don't disregard them completely. They are powerful machines but make sure that the software you will use in your college (Solidworks etc.) is compatible with Mac OS.

If you don't want 17 inch laptops, then go for something in the mid range - like 15 inches. Toshiba has some pretty good lineups with its Satellite collection. I did some research and I feel the P50 version might be good for you. But again, I have no idea about your budget, so look for yourself. Attached is a pretty good page I found on Google.

Not that I was an engineering major, but if you are working with a graphics program for any designs you will want to have a decent size screen. It's just more convenient. You don't really need to have a top of the line graphics card for any CAD software, unless you are going to use it for more than just school, you can stick to the basics. I used to play around with Mechanical CAD with my dad for his job after taking a class and he still has a basic Dell he got like 10 years ago. It's a dinosaur and still works just fine. You can get a pretty solid laptop for less than $400 at Walmart for this.

For student laptop should have

It must has:

1) 12 cellbattery

2) 500GB harddisk (7200 rpm) Most laptops come with hardisk with 5000rpm

3) Windows 7 Home premium

4) Wifi

5) Warranty

6) i3 processor

Solidworks? Good performing laptop GPUs are overpriced, and still significantly inferior to mid-range ($200 or more) desktop video cards. Also, it seems unusual to find a laptop that has both a good GPU and a small size/screen.

Maybe you should ask at your engineering dept about your options options.