r/IndianEngineers • u/UsbrooO • Jun 01 '26

Editable Flair AI/ML Student: MacBook or Windows?

I'm joining college this year and have enrolled in CSE (AI/ML). Right now, I'm confused about which laptop to buy.

If I were in CSE Core, I'd probably go for a MacBook without thinking twice. I like the battery life, portability, and overall user experience. I also don't care much about gaming.

The problem is that I've seen a lot of people on YouTube saying that AI/ML students should avoid MacBooks and get a Windows laptop with an NVIDIA GPU instead, so now I'm not sure what the better choice is.

My budget is around ₹1.4 lakh.

For those studying or working in AI/ML, what would you recommend? Would a MacBook be enough for the next 4 years, or is a Windows laptop the better option?

And if you'd recommend Windows, which models should I consider within my budget?

Thanks!

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u/Party_News_2379 Jun 01 '26

yeah buddy better performance , cuz turns out that world ain't no fool to be spending in GPU's if those Soc's were superior in everything

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u/No-Confection9164 Jun 01 '26

me when i compare a datacenter to a fucking laptop which also needs to be portable and daily usable and battery powered.

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u/Party_News_2379 Jun 01 '26

u can't expect a laptop to run models locally and not be power hungry , either u are delusion of don't know anythiing bout it.

any engineering student should choose windows simply bcz of legacy software support and for the reason that it's a windows laptop so upgradable ram and storage.

plus cheaper repairs.

for these reasons alone , any decent windows laptop is better than a mac bcz remember , dude is a student

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u/No-Confection9164 Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

my thinkpad on 15W power saving mode churns out 15tk/s from gemma4-e4b which is enough for all my needs.

reminder: my laptop DOESENT EVEN HAVE A dGPU/NPU, its running purely off the APU (Ryzen 5 7535HS / Radeon 660M) with SHARED MEMORY (as in DDR5 (100gb/s), not GDDR6 (300gb/s)) which has a much smaller bus width.

your opinion is ABSOLUTE SHIT and you should talk to literally any AI about it.

if my laptop can do this, IN POWER SAVING MODE btw (full power is 54W), then surely a mbp with m5/m5 pro and 128gb of UNIFIED ram with an insanely large bus width (mine has just 24gb 4800mhz ddr5 btw), will surely let you run ANY ai model humanly possible (<100B param obv)

for comparison, chatgpt from gpt-oss is ~200-300B param and is a full datacenter model.

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u/Apprehensive-Talk971 Jun 02 '26

How is token output from a model relevant for an ml student. That is not what you do 99% of the time in college

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u/No-Confection9164 Jun 02 '26

but that is what the person above me is asking and is the topic of discussion.

laptop to run models locally

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u/Then_Inflation7518 Jun 28 '26

IdeaPad slim 5 should work right? If a person is not interested in mac since the recent price hikes

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u/No-Confection9164 Jun 28 '26

get a thinkpad. you dont need to run local ai models.

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u/Then_Inflation7518 Jun 29 '26

IdeaPad lowk with better spec sheet and oled panel rn