[h4nnib4l]

For $1600, you could be a more-than-adequate laptop, a tablet, a good meal, a cheap hooker, enough blow for you and the hooker, and the hotel room in which to consume the blow and get blown by the hooker.

Or you could buy a MacBook.

[Nykc]

If you are a hipster you will have to get a macbook or you will get your ass kicked in the coffee shop when you want to look important

[supersloth]

what's the 'for college' part got to do with it?

[modi123_1]

It provides an air of legitimacy for buying a $1600 macbook. "This is for... COLLEGE!"

I yell the same when drinking an entire bottle of Jack.

[supersloth]

i love my macbook pro. DON'T LET THEM MAKE YOU FEEL BAD.

[modi123_1]

supersloth does uncover an interesting point. If people on the internet can make you feel bad over your laptop brand it may be a better choice to take that $1600 and travel for a year before college. All the while looking for a pair of balls so you can man the fuck up.

[BetaWar]

For the money I would go towards something like this:
http://www.shopping....0us-Notebook-PC

Then you can spend $300 extra if you want for a .5GB SSD at Amazon and have one hell of a laptop. Plus you still have about $500 left over for whatever. Far better deal overall.

[Nykc]

Macbook == College excuse
Stripper == Single mom putting herself through college.

Don't be a dick, support single moms

[supersloth]

Single mom putting herself through college = single mom with an excuse to get a macbook

[carnivroar]

My Asus N56VZ has:

NVIDIA G-Force 650m (for CUDA programming)
3rd gen i7
Full HD Matte screen 15.6" (Matte is better for programming)
8 GB ram
750GB 7200 rpm HDD
BluRay player (can't figure out how to get it to work on Ubuntu though)
Great built-in speakers

$1000

[jon.kiparsky]

supersloth, on 27 March 2013 - 12:48 PM, said:

Single mom putting herself through college = single mom with an excuse to get a macbook

single mom putting herself through college = enough of an excuse in mac's book

[Nykc]

Here u go college dude.
http://www.woot.com/

[CarDriver]

supersloth, on 27 March 2013 - 11:12 AM, said:

what's the 'for college' part got to do with it?

Quite a lot. I wouldn't buy a new laptop if I were not going to college. My current PC situation is apparently inadequate for college. You MUST have a laptop with at least 4GB RAM and Windows or OS X; I have 3GB with Linux.

[jon.kiparsky]

If it's a choice between windows and mac, there's no question - get the mac. But your current machine will be fine for any programming you're likely to do.

[CarDriver]

Thanks for the replies so far. Keep in mind: I don't have to spend $1,600. I think I could get by just fine with a lower-end 13-inch Air or Pro. And if I were to get something other than a Mac, I would probably look at Lenovos. I would take the U300s over a MacBook Air any day (if it had OS X out of the box).

One thing some of you mentioned: the screen size. I'm used to a 17-inch screen for programming, and sometimes I think 17 is too small. I guess I can get used to 13, but the newer Retina Pros look like iPads now. If I will miss my Dell for anything, it will be the screen size that makes the best MacBook look obnoxiously tiny.

I'm really leaning towards the 13-inch Air. But do you think it's worth it to upgrade to a Core i7? Can I get by with 4GB RAM? Something tells me I'll value processing power over RAM, as I rarely have more than 3 applications open.

I just checked, and I can get a 13-inch Air with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and a 2GHz Core i7 for $1,540.
Alternatively, I could get the same thing with a 128GB SSD, 8GB RAM, and a regular 1.8GHz Core i5 for $1,240.

Will the processor matter? I can probably deal with the small SSD.