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Harsh
Harsh

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Should I buy a MacBook Pro(2018) or a Dell XPS 15 For Machine Learning?

Hello everyone, So I am a student and I am very much interested in Machine Learning and Data Science. Since Dell comes with NVIDIA graphics card It can support CUDA programming but It comes with Windows, so I have my concerns. I had also heard the MacBook is better for programming and running Software(because of Unix based OS).

Now that Windows has WSL should I go for Mac and run my code in the cloud or can I use Windows for development with WSL?

Top comments (4)

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codadensys profile image
codadensys

While not sold with Linux the XPS 15 is the bigger brother to XPS 13 which does. So most drivers for XPS 15 should match up well with 13 to allow you to install Linux. Not sure how much value CUDA libraries would be if you want it to run through WSL to hardware, or if that’s just two separate concerns. Also windows is not a bad platform for development. It’s another platform for development that has its pros and cons. If you want a catch all a Mac maxed out as much as you can with a hypervisor and you can run and work in everything. Though Apple hardware gets really pricey to do that on regular basis.

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lkit57a03 profile image
Harsh

Actually, XPS 13 does not have a Nvidia card so it cannot support CUDA.... maybe I will go with xps 15

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lkit57a03 profile image
Harsh

Thanks for the suggestion I am looking for Dell as well... How is your Battery Life? How is customer support?

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iamschulz profile image
Daniel Schulz

Is the graphics card accessible through wsl by now? Last time I tried that it wasn't, and I couldn't do anything ML related on that setup.