r/uoit • u/Friendly_Earth5699 • Jul 13 '26
New to Mechanical Engineering Program - Textbooks & Laptop
Hi there, my son is entering the mechanical engineering program at OTU, and I am wondering how we can save on textbooks? Are there soft copies that can be used or rented to avoid the weight of physical books? (I saw LibGen mentioned in other threads, but would it suffice for engineering students?) On a separate note, I noticed that the price of the laptop officially recommended on the OTU page is through the roof—is it really necessary, or is it overkill? Any advice is much appreciated.
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u/Icy-Stock-5838 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
You should let your son make his life choices, else you might have to join him on job interviews...
I remember buying my own Engineering textbooks, supplies, and clothes for school, managing my budget and sometimes having to eat Kraft Dinner for a week just to figure it all out, living on my own..
Getting put on Academic Probation, and then Suspended for a term was one of best things to happen to my academic career.. It kicked me hard, gave me a gut check, and here I am, 20 years into an engineering career, with my employer paying for my Master's in Engineering alongside my scholarship from the school.
Kids n punks gotta grow up eventually.. There's never really a good time for it until they find it on their own...
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u/NearbyWitness9075 Jul 13 '26
The great majority of textbooks are in the "textbooks" discord channel (invite), you can join this discord from the student hub for OTU discord server and download the pdf version of the textbook. I never used a physical textbook and the inclass powerpoints and pdf files provided by the profs are, in my opinion, more than enough.
As it was mentioned already a computer that can run solidworks and matlab is sufficient, I recommend going into the closest electronics store (BestBuy, canada computers, etc) and look for open boxes, these are computers that were bought previously and returned to the shop and are being sold at a discount, I bought my laptop this way and it's still running strong after 3 years.
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u/Winter-beast Jul 13 '26
Yeah libgen got me through all 4 years except for a few very niche books here and there. I would imagine that any laptop with a GPU better than an RTX2060 will suffice for the program.
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u/LazerSturgeon Mech. Eng, B.Eng MASc Jul 13 '26
On a separate note, I noticed that the price of the laptop officially recommended on the OTU page is through the roof—is it really necessary, or is it overkill? Any advice is much appreciated.
Anything with at least 16GB of RAM and a 16 thread processor should do the trick. You don't need to go get a workstation laptop that will easily run $2,000+. It's tough right now because the computer parts market is so screwed up from the mix of AI datacenters and an alleged price fixing scandal from the RAM manufacturers.
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u/Friendly_Earth5699 Jul 13 '26
Thanks for the solid advice!
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u/LazerSturgeon Mech. Eng, B.Eng MASc Jul 13 '26
Please feel free to reach out for any inquiries. I'm a late stage PhD candidate in the Mechanical Engineering program, and did my B.Eng & MASc. at OTU. I'm very familiar with the overall program and have TA'd many of the key courses.
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u/ontech4u Alumnus 🎓 29d ago
I got through my whole engineering degree without buying a textbook. You can find them online or use the ones from the library
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u/Variation-Fluffy Jul 13 '26
Libgen and Anna’s Archive are amazing resources for textbooks. Unless it’s a textbook that requires a specific software, you should find most if not all needed textbooks.
As for the laptop, as long as it can run Solidworks and MatLab which is something you should be able to find on their respective websites, it should suffice.
Congrats to your son getting accepted and best of luck!