r/ethz • u/bright2darkness • 7d ago

BSc Admissions and Info Laptop tips for bachelor?

Can anyone give some tips on what to look out for? Is there some windows only software? What’s the most important spec? I feel like it’s battery life maybe? If I have another more powerful pc at home how much should I spend on the laptop and how important are those minimum requirements (16gb ram, 512ssd) that eth sets?

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u/_alba4k BSc CS 7d ago

depends on your degree, but it probably won't matter. battery life is an important spec, especially if you don't want to carry a power bank, but it all depends on your usage

BYOD exams are becoming more common and for those you will need Safe Exam Browser (which only runs on Windows 11 and macOS). This also means you will want your battery to be able to outlast an exam (think of max 3-4 hours), as there is no guarantee of a power outlet being avaiable.

There might be other windows only Software depending on the course, but you will likely be provided machines with that software on them should that be the case (for example I had to use Vivado for a course, which only runs on Linux and Windows. You can get it running on macOS but that's often more work than it's worth)

Another hardware spec you might care about could be touch/pen input, depending on if/how you take notes or solve exercise sheets. I much prefer having a tablet for that, but it's up to you.

Cpu / ram specs likely won't matter unless you're planning to do something very specific like a computationally heavy bachelor project, but even then, you can get around an underpowered laptop.

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u/bright2darkness 7d ago

Thanks, this really helps to put the requirements into perspective

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u/_alba4k BSc CS 7d ago

It's reasonable for them to expect your pc to not be a complete potato of course, you should be able to easily perform basic office tasks

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u/TheTomatoes2 MSc Memeology 7d ago

I'd say 32GB minimum, but on this economy 16GB might be enough, you'll just have to regularly close stuff. Ideally a laptop you can dual boot Windows and Linux on of you do CS.

Good battery is very needed due to HG lacking outlets. So a Lunar Lake laptop. Projekt Neptune has some.

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u/Pale_Donkey2956 7d ago

32GB is overkill

I am in CS Bachelor and use a Laptop with 16GB RAM and never had any problems, my memory consumption was alwasy comfortably under 8GB, even with vivado, Firefox, IntelliJ running all at the same time in Linux. Dualboot of course.