Laptop for engineering college

[canesfan8193]

I am getting a laptop for college real soon and I was hoping someone could give me some recommendations on my choices. Buying a New Laptop | Student Owned Computing that is the recommended laptops for my school. My cousin also keeps telling me to get a dedicated graphics card to run the programs and such.

I was thinking of getting:
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/products/Laptops/ThinkPad/w-series/W520/index.html --- Lenovo ThinkPad W520. A friend at NCSU has this laptop and loves it. I know this one exceeds the recommendations and would be a perfect choice.
http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-l502x/fs ---- the XPS 15 for $999.99 looks like a good choice (and dell is now giving a free xbox 360 with purchases ). I would prefer to get this one cause the specs look fine and the xbox. Do you think this one would run all the programs fine? and do you think the laptop would run everything fine like 5 years from now?

Any help from someone who knows more than me would be great

 

[nathanmitchell]

Depending on what programs you are going to run ect in my time in ICT 1 year in normal time is 10 years in tech its going so fast now that your laptop wont last 5 years but it will last as a very good laptop and handle everything for the next 2 maybe 3 as you may be able to upgrade it i had a laptop from 2007 dell xps old module and was able to get more RAM and graphics card upgrade. and for lenovo never heard of them so would say a NO NO keep away.