Apple Drops MacBook Educational Pricing to $899

[Mush Tush]

Ugh! Of course, with my luck I had to go ahead and graduate in December
I guess I'll just work on saving up for either a MBP or the tablet

I graduated in May and bought my MBP a few months later with the edu discount. Economy sucks and you're still a student. If only a student of life with a connection to a University.

On another note...

I'm bitter that my MBP came with a 160 gb HDD and the lower model comes with a 250GB!!! Doesn't seem fair that the vitals; RAM, processor speed, and the HDD are all identical (barring the HDD)!!

WTF?

 

[TurnerMan]

Sadly the Acer mini laptop I bought my 9-year-old has more USB ports than my MBP and it's less than 1/2 the cost of the standard Macbook. Barring the OS and hardware control Apple is known for, what defines the Macbook at $800 as a great deal for college students besides TDM?

 

[Little Endian]

Sadly the Acer mini laptop I bought my 9-year-old has more USB ports than my MBP and it's less than 1/2 the cost of the standard Macbook. Barring the OS and hardware control Apple is known for, what defines the Macbook at $800 as a great deal for college students besides TDM?

More USB ports = better more usable computer.....
who cares about battery life, GPU performance, portability, reliability, resale value etc.
Most sub $500 PC notebooks with similar screen size and CPU specs either lack the portability, GPU performance or battery life that the Macbook offers.

Netbooks like your Acer Mini laptop can be a good option for some however comparing a netbook with an Intel Atom processor Intel Graphics and piddly little screen to a Core 2 Duo with a dedicated discreete GPU and 13.3 inch higher resolution screen is incomprehensible. Most netbooks are great for casual web browsing, email, and basic document creation. If you need serious work though most netbooks just won't cut it. Also considering how most netbooks I have used choke on even youtube and HD playback, I would say that most of the current Atom powered netbooks will be obsolete in less than two years.

College students design web pages, do wicked research projects, work with massive databases and spreadsheets, deal with heavy multimedia stuff etc etc. Not to even mention those who are in IT related, creative, and technical fields where they have needs that far outreach those that may be served by a netbook. Also have you ever tried staring at a 9-10 inch screen with 1024 by 600 resolution for 2-3 hours? no problem if you want to be wearing coke bottle thick trifocals by the time your 40.