Laptop or tablet for a Mathematics undergrad
January 28, 2025 1:41 PM   Subscribe

My daughter will be starting a Maths degree at a UK university later this year, and is due for a laptop upgrade. She's been using a 13" MacBook Pro for the past few years. Some friends have recommended a tablet for taking to classes. I'd appreciate recommendations, especially from personal experience.

She doesn't have to remain with Apple. She is used to Macbooks and iPads, but she also uses a Windows computer in the house. She's most likely to continue using the Google suite for things like Mail, Docs, Sheets, Slides. What other software will Mathematics undergrads be using?

She was thinking of a tablet as she would probably be taking lots of handwritten notes, not just typing. I'm not sure if a tablet would suffice as her primary computer though. Nobody in the house currently uses a tablet for productivity, we've just been using them for gaming or media consumption.

Imagine for now that cost isn't a factor – what would be the ideal setup in your opinion?

Are there any good video demonstrations from actual students you could point me to?
posted by snarfois to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)
 
Response by poster: Perhaps a laptop that doubles as a tablet (those with detachable screen)? But only if it matches a Macbook in trackpad performance. I've heard good things about Microsoft Surface Books, but I hate Microsoft (from daily experience).
posted by snarfois at 1:46 PM on January 28


Feel free to ignore, I'm not a student.

I sat in on a couple university lectures nearby. Many of the students are now using ipads with styluses to take notes, marking up the pdfed slide decks.

But a tablet won't suffice for the programming courses she'll be taking. You can't code effectively on an iPad due to limitations in iOS.

Personally, I would wait for her to start her course in university and she'll come back with a recommendation once she sees what kind of software she'll be using and what the other students use. I have a feeling she'll want both a new laptop and a new tablet. The MacBook Air 15" and the 13" iPad air would work well.
posted by just.good.enough at 1:55 PM on January 28 [5 favorites]


I think she should wait, but you absolutely can program on an iPad. There’s tons of web IDEs out there, and it’s trivial to ssh into any system you need. I wouldn’t buy an iPad for programming, but it’s definitely doable.
posted by bowbeacon at 2:02 PM on January 28


If cost isn't an option then yeah something with a detachable screen, but she's going (hopefully!) be coding, maybe doing arduino and stuff, which will be so much easier with a laptop, especially since the microcontrollers, and she might get into other things (hopefully!) like 3D printing or modelling and so on that again, will just be so much more sensible on a laptop.
posted by J.R. Hartley at 2:08 PM on January 28


If cost isn’t a factor, then a tablet and a laptop is in most ways going to be a better experience than a single 2-in-1, which usually involve some compromises.
posted by zamboni at 2:44 PM on January 28 [3 favorites]


A related question about a biochemistry student, from four years ago. My answer is pretty much the same as it was for that student: Don't rely on a tablet alone, since there's quite likely software that you'll need to use for your courses which will be unavailable for tablets (Maple, Mathematica, R, and SPSS) come to mind. A tablet for note-taking and a laptop for more serious work is a pretty sweet setup, though.
posted by Johnny Assay at 2:46 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]


The best person to ask would be the programme director of the degree she's going to study - they'll know what software students need to be able to run, what kinds of problems students showing up with current machines are running in to in practice, and whether there are any unusual constraints for her degree specifically (e.g. modules taught by other departments that might not fit the maths department's usual recommendations). If you can't find out who the programme director is from the department web site, ask the admissions staff.
posted by offog at 3:54 PM on January 28


My son in university uses an iPad for taking notes, sometimes in class but also on PDF documents. He’s been doing this since high school and reports it works very well.

His main homework and writing device is a 15-inch MacBook Air. He had. 13-inch in High School, and the extra screen real estate has been very valuable, especially for programming.

All his math assignments are required to be in LaTeX. I believe he does that on his Mac.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 4:37 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]


Web LaTeX editors like Overleaf are quite good; I prefer them to installing MacTeX locally.

That said, they're not stellar on tablet, nor is real programming. Tablet-only is doable (web-based IDEs are improving) but I agree with suggestions for tablet+laptop if you can swing it; I did undergrad before laptops in class were ubiquitous (thank goodness) and when I went back for a masters I found iPad for notes to be fantastic.
posted by supercres at 7:52 PM on January 28


A friend of mine is doing a maths degree in the UK and uses a Mac. They have had horrendous problems getting the (mandated) graphing programs to run on a Mac because any time there is a MacOS update things break. The students using Windows PCs don't have this problem and the tech support for Apple from the university is next to awful because they all use Windows as well.

Parallels (Windows emulation software) solves this problem but it does cost them £100 a year for the licence and it took a bit of getting used to. YMMV depending on the software, university tech support, and your daughter's willingness to hunt down and solve minor installation problems via Googling and swearing.

Also, there is no way they could write their coursework on a tablet. Their average essay is around 30 (thirty) pages of equations and graphs, and has been as much as 50 pages. That's not practical on a tablet, though tablets are brilliant for the note taking. As others have mentioned if your daughter uses a Mac she will have to learn to become proficient with LaTeX for writing equations and formulas; my friend uses the equation editor in Pages for this (apparently it is basically LaTeX with some very slight tweaks, although I've not used it so I can't confirm or deny) and finds it works well, they don't use any other LaTeX software or tools.

So I'd nth the suggestions she gets a tablet for lectures and a laptop for coursework if possible.
posted by underclocked at 12:01 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]


Can she reach out to the university to double-check the specification needed? They may be able to signpost her to the course tutor who should be able to advise.
posted by coffee_monster at 2:26 AM on January 29 [3 favorites]


I agree with her assumption that she will mostly be wanting to take handwritten notes, because she'll need to write in mathematical symbols and that's not easy to to do using a keyboard unless she's already very, very proficient at LaTeX. Reddit suggests that a lot of people still use pen and paper for this (which is what I did in the olden days) but some use a tablet. This is so much personal preference that I don't think her department will be that much help.

I think she'll need a Windows laptop regardless of anything else she has, and she should definitely be able to ask what spec is needed/useful.
posted by plonkee at 9:39 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]


I forgot. The obvious single device is a Surface Pro tablet - since you can use it as tablet for handwritten note taking and also as a regular Windows laptop (albeit annoying to type in bed or on the sofa). Probably not very cool though.
posted by plonkee at 9:44 AM on January 29


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