Hi! I'm helping my younger sister choose her first laptop before she starts university in 2027, and I'd really appreciate advice from Interior Design/Interior Architecture students and working designers. She is also kind of interested in Product/Industrial Design but is a bit unsure.

Her course isn't finalized yet, but her shortlist has become much more interior/spatial/furniture-focused than we initially thought.

Some of the courses she's currently considering are along the lines of:

• Pearl Academy – Interior Architectural Design
• IIAD – Interior Architecture & Design
• NID – Furniture & Interior Design
• MIT Institute of Design – Interior Space & Furniture Design
• Symbiosis Institute of Design – Interior Space Design
• University of Edinburgh – Interior Design
• Glasgow School of Art – Interior Design
• possibly NAFA – Biophilic Design

She's also considering one or two broader interdisciplinary options such as Bristol's Design with Innovation, so we don't know exactly where she'll end up yet.

She's currently in CBSE Class 12 studying Fine Arts/Painting, Fashion Design, History, Political Science, Psychology and English, so she has a creative background but basically no CAD/3D/software experience yet.

That's why I don't want to pretend we know whether she “needs” Revit, Rhino, 3ds Max, SketchUp, AutoCAD, Blender, V-Ray, Enscape, Lumion, etc.

I'd rather ask people who've actually studied these courses:

What software did you genuinely end up using during your Interior Design degree?

Did the software requirements change substantially between first year and final year?

Were there programmes you expected to need but barely used?

Did rendering eventually become the thing that demanded the most from your laptop?

Mac vs Windows

This is probably our biggest uncertainty.

She's open to both.

We like MacBooks because of the battery life, build quality, portability and longevity, and she already uses an iPhone/iPad.

But I don't want to buy her a MacBook now and discover in year 2 or 3 that her course relies heavily on Windows-only or Windows-preferred software.

For people who actually studied Interior Design / Interior Architecture:

• Did anyone successfully use a Mac throughout the entire degree?
• What software caused problems, if any?
• Did you end up needing Windows anyway?
• Would you personally choose Mac again?

And for people who used Windows creator/gaming laptops:

• Was the extra GPU performance actually useful?
• Did the weight and charger become annoying?
• What was battery life like during ordinary classes?
• Did fan noise/heat become a problem?
• Would you buy another high-performance Windows laptop?

What we're looking for

This will probably be her only computer, rather than a laptop + desktop setup.

We'd ideally like it to last around 4–6 years, including later-year 3D/rendering work rather than merely surviving for Word and web browsing.

We're buying new in India.

Budget is roughly:

₹1 lakh = ideal
₹1.3–1.5 lakh = completely comfortable if worthwhile
₹1.8 lakh = roughly the normal ceiling
Could stretch closer to ₹2 lakh only if there is a genuinely substantial long-term benefit

Her personal priorities are pretty simple:

• reliable
• good battery life
• not unnecessarily heavy
• good screen
• able to handle her degree for years
• preferably not ugly

She'll probably be carrying it alongside sketchbooks/materials, so something around 1.8–2.2 kg sounds more appealing than a huge gaming machine.

She already has an iPad, so she doesn't necessarily need a touchscreen laptop.

Gaming is basically irrelevant.

She probably won't have a permanent external monitor either, so the laptop screen will matter.

One more question: should we even buy yet?

She starts university in 2027, but we're currently considering buying the laptop within the next few months, especially so he can kind of start experimenting with some software a bit and also for her applications.

Because her university isn't finalized yet, would experienced students wait until she has an offer/course-specific computer requirements, or is it reasonable to buy now if we choose a sufficiently versatile Windows machine?

If you were starting an Interior Design/Interior Architecture degree again today, knowing what you know now:

What type of laptop would you buy, and what would you avoid?

I'm especially interested in long-term experiences — what became a bottleneck, what broke, what you regretted spending money on, and what specifications actually mattered by final year.

Thank you!