Which mac for college?

[Lawrence14]

Does anyone have experience buying on ebay or amazon or anything, and is that a smart idea? I'm getting 800 for a mac (paying the rest myself) , but I'd like to find something a little cheaper so I can get an ipad. But the computer is my first priority.

Also thanks everyone for the help, I'm new to everything mac

 

[beamer8912]

Seriously, it's just college.

Literally the cheapest laptop you could possibly find at Bestbuy will do the job.

If you want a Mac, just get the cheapest one.

Haha that could not be more false. It can be easily said that a college student uses their computer more and necessitate more power than a regular user. Not sure what you studied in college, but I frequently tasked my computer with mathematica, matlab, labwiew, c++ and java coding, video/picture editing etc. College students do much, much more than type essays and make power points.

edit: I guess it could be said that it would depend greatly on your major. If you have a real major, then the $200 laptop at best buy won't cut it. However, if you're one of those humanities or social "sciences" majors then a budget computer with MS Office is all you need.

 

[Seany92]

Im buying a macbook for college. I did a year with my toshiba, i5,4Gb ram and intel graphics nothing special. I found it very difficult to play borderlands while in lectures, the laptop just couldn't cut it. It handled coding java and html just fine and runs photoshop with no issues. Its a grand laptop I just want more for a computer. Battery life is a biggie, lecture halls do not have plugs except from the front and the back, no one ever goes to the front and you know exactly what happens when you sit at the back

No matter what people say a 15inch is fine. I carry my laptop every day and dont think it is annoying and for me a 13inch is way to small.

 

[Lawrence14]

My current major is accounting but I'm thinking about MIS now too. I'm bringing up my toshiba laptop which is an almost-7 pound monster that holds a charge for a whopping 3 minutes just in case there are any windows only programs.

 

[jcpb]

Back during the university days I had to carry a backpack full of textbooks, with the total weight approaching that of a bag of rice. Adding a 15" laptop into the mix made no difference at all to the carrying weight.

In any case, wait for another 72 hours since you can get this year's revision with education pricing anyhow.

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My current major is accounting but I'm thinking about MIS now too. I'm bringing up my toshiba laptop which is an almost-7 pound monster that holds a charge for a whopping 3 minutes just in case there are any windows only programs.

Or you can get an MBA and run Windows via Bootcamp/Parallels.

 

[Lawrence14]

I don't think I want my Mac to be associated with windows in any way

 

[beamer8912]

My current major is accounting but I'm thinking about MIS now too. I'm bringing up my toshiba laptop which is an almost-7 pound monster that holds a charge for a whopping 3 minutes just in case there are any windows only programs.

So what will you use it for? Papers, some media and the occasional financial program?

If you do any quantitative analysis (high level computational algorithms) then you may need some horsepower. But if you're essentially sticking to excel sheets or basic financial programs, then any current machine will do you just fine.

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I don't think I want my Mac to be associated with windows in any way

That might not be your choice. Some programs are still windows only. I guess you could always borrow a friends, or use one in the computing lab. But that sorta defeats the purpose of having your own laptop.

 

[Lawrence14]

Look a couple posts back, I'm bringing up a pc. As of right now i dont need it to do anything special. But I want it to be able to last a long time. And if I decide I want to do any video editing, graphic design stuff, or play a certain game, I'd like to be able to

 

[TjeuV]

Seriously, it's just college.

Literally the cheapest laptop you could possibly find at Bestbuy will do the job.

If you want a Mac, just get the cheapest one.

Just college? Any idea what diversity you have there? If it's non-tech subjects, ok you're right. But there's so many that demands high performance computers. And I wouldn't recommend going for the cheapest aswell. I like to have some peace of mind, not having to worry every time I use a computer that it might crash and result in any documents getting lost, despite the back-ups.

small edit: by cheapest I mean the cheapest models out there, not the mac's baseline models

 

[jcpb]

I don't think I want my Mac to be associated with windows in any way

So carry two laptops - one for Mac, one for Windows - to college? That makes less sense than dual-booting Mac+Windows on a Mac laptop.

 

[beamer8912]

Look a couple posts back, I'm bringing up a pc. As of right now i dont need it to do anything special. But I want it to be able to last a long time. And if I decide I want to do any video editing, graphic design stuff, or play a certain game, I'd like to be able to

Games are going to be tough. Right now most of the entry level macs can play moderate games at mediocre frame rates. To be perfectly honest, I would suggest to you what I did.

When I started 4 years ago, I bought an entry level macbook and built a monster desktop PC. Together they cost ~$2000 and worked flawlessly. You can easily make small adjustments to get this combine under $1500. I could play any game on at least medium detail, crankout processor/GPU intensive calculations and have the power of a decent workstation, but also the portability, fluidity and ease of a mac.

I'm working on upgrading my setup for grad school. I just built a new PC, ~$900 for 560Ti and 3550K ivy bridge setup with a second monitor. I'm planning on getting a 15" MBP or 13" MBA depending on the outcome of the upgrades at WWDC.

 

[Lawrence14]

The pc will basically be a desktop in my dorm for me and friends and without pc's to use if we ever need to use a windows program instead of spending more money on parallels and another copy of windows. and the Mac will be my main computer to bring around.

 

[beamer8912]

The pc will basically be a desktop in my dorm for me and friends and without pc's to use if we ever need to use a windows program instead of spending more money on parallels and another copy of windows. and the Mac will be my main computer to bring around.

Most schools offer a free windows upgrade to their students (you get TONS of free software in college, its awesome!). You can actually burn that to a disc, or put it on a USB and use it as a fresh install for boot camp. Pretty easy to do actually.