Laptop for a college kid

[OCMD]

If you are lucky and live near a Microcenter, http://www.microcenter.com/ hands down this is the place to buy. Beats Costco, and get the extended warranty, If they cant fix it they replace it, no problem. Stay away from Lenovos. Get an Asus or an Acer. I live off those - except the one kid who just absolutely needed to have a Mac because one of her leftist professors ordered her to get one....But you will pay out the nose and it won't have the features, speed and power of a PC. But she loves it and has had no issues with it for 3 seasons I mean years in college. I will say that when my kid got her overpriced Apple product, she could have had an Acer for 1/3 the price with more power, features, etc. Blew the doors of the Apple product.
If you are doing anything with video rendering, get an I7.

 

[Bruce]

long standing argument

I understand, I fought the Mac addiction for many years. I am a Linux based Software Developer and DBA. It was the combination of higher resolution screens and OS X that won me over. I dislike much of the Apple marketing and control but choose to live with it for simplicity. Although my Macs spend most of their work time as high end terminal emulators.

 

[KXCam22]

I would suggest buying a good one in the near 2k range. For my son 5 yeats and engineering degree later it is still a current fast laptop. That was an asus. I have a work hp zbook pro which is the best laptop I have owned, enough that I bought another one. Cam.

 

[BigN8]

If you are lucky and live near a Microcenter, http://www.microcenter.com/ hands down this is the place to buy. Beats Costco, and get the extended warranty, If they cant fix it they replace it, no problem. Stay away from Lenovos. Get an Asus or an Acer. I live off those - except the one kid who just absolutely needed to have a Mac because one of her leftist professors ordered her to get one....But you will pay out the nose and it won't have the features, speed and power of a PC. But she loves it and has had no issues with it for 3 seasons I mean years in college. I will say that when my kid got her overpriced Apple product, she could have had an Acer for 1/3 the price with more power, features, etc. Blew the doors of the Apple product.
If you are doing anything with video rendering, get an I7.

Thanks! I just checked out this website and they have some good deals it looks like, plus there is one here in the DFW area.

 

[Mainah]

I am ashamed to admit I agree with @Bruce. Edit - Agreeing with Bruce is nothing to be ashamed of but being in a similar line of work and being an apple fan usually does not go hand in hand. I am a data guy and now only own one non-apple laptop for home use. Why? Apple just darn works, all the time, everytime. The last thing I want to be at home is techsupport/admin. 5 iphones, 4 apple tvs, 3 ipads, 2 mac airs, 1 macbook, and 1 apple watch. Yes I am an apple sheep and yes we just bought a brand new mac air for my daughter headed off to college as a freshman. We even pay for extra cloud storage and buy movies direct through apple. I know I am paying through the nose but it works, it works for the whole family, it works everytime.

The one thing I have never had to do. Fix any of those apple devices or spend any time on the phone with tech support except for sending in for a broken screen. No bugs of any kind no driver issues, no registry editing, no windows fresh installs waiting for days for all of the updates and reboots to complete, no command prompt needed. Scratch that I did have to replace a battery in a 2012 mac air. I replaced the battery because the laptop still works great even after 5 years.

 

[BigN8]

Thank you all for the input and advice. I think I'm going to go with a 13" MacBook. I thought I would share one last thing from CR for anyone else trying to equip their college kid.

 

[smack]

Happy shopping - for what it's worth I would stick with either the Macbook Pro or the Macbook Air. With the Macbook, which is the newest model, I haven't seen enough USB-C accessories and I think a student would benefit from the additional ports on either the Air or the Pro. No standard USB, no headphone jack and no SD card slot on the Macbook. There is a deal now where you get free Beats wireless headphones (which are decent) with the purchase of a new Apple laptop (just bought a new air for my oldest daughter and she got the white beats with them and was thrilled).

 

[BigN8]

Happy shopping - for what it's worth I would stick with either the Macbook Pro or the Macbook Air. With the Macbook, which is the newest model, I haven't seen enough USB-C accessories and I think a student would benefit from the additional ports on either the Air or the Pro. No standard USB, no headphone jack and no SD card slot on the Macbook. There is a deal now where you get free Beats wireless headphones (which are decent) with the purchase of a new Apple laptop (just bought a new air for my oldest daughter and she got the white beats with them and was thrilled).

Thanks. I was just looking at the comparison page on Apple. I wasn't sure the difference between Macbook, Macbook air, and the pro. And what the heck is a thunderbolt port??!! Man I am so far behind in tech stuff now...... I walked through a Bestbuy the other day and felt over whelmed! Sad.......

 

[smack]

I think that you'd be fine with either the Macbook Pro or the Macbook Air - Bruce and Mainah may be able to chip in as well on their thoughts as well as appears we're all in IT and have run most gear out there. Macbook Air - portable/lower cost Macbook Pro - more CPU/Mem/Storage/ Higher cost. Thunderbolt is a type of connection that Apple used for awhile to connect multiple services through a single cable (USB\Video\etc.).

For what it's worth I've run the same 13" Macbook Air for the last 4 years (despite being able to upgrade for free every year through work) and it's handled everything I throw at it. If I could improve it , I would go bigger on the Hard Drive (the new ones remedy that with larger drives available).

 

[Bruce]

the difference between Macbook, Macbook air, and the pro

MacBook = least expensive Apple laptop. Low end processor, smaller screen.

MacBook Air = smallest Apple laptop. Tiny things that are small and light and cool. Buy it for you ego and for tasks you could accomplish with a tablet.

MacBook Pro = best of the Apple laptops. This is what you want.

what the heck is a thunderbolt port

Thunderbolt 3 is USB C to the non Apple world. MacBook Pro and MacBook only have USB C ports. They would be used to connect external storage and an external monitor or TV. Unfortunately adapter cables will be necessary for most connections. I would buy something like this $30 hub to be able to use normal USB devices.

Thunderbolt 2 Ports are Mini Display Port to the non Apple world. They are primarily used to connect to displays. You can use it to drive an external monitor or TV. Doing so will require a cable, likely an expensive adaptor cable. Apple also uses them for other purposes such as connecting external hard drives.

I haven't seen enough USB-C accessories

Unfortunately of the current models only the Air has old style USB ports.

@BigN8 you can get a discount from the Apple Education Store - https://www.apple.com/us-hed/shop

 

[4x15mph]

Great question and we will all have opinions. For my first son we went with a PC but he was doing auto cad and mechanical engineering apps that required windows so if he had a mac he would have to dual boot it to run windows and Mac OS. That defeats the purpose some

Just bought the Apple for our son that is headed to college this year. MacBook Air with the beats headphones and $100 student discount. Based on my experience with our Mac desktop he will get 5 plus years of care free computing. Apple is so awesome as someone said ... it just works. Our Mac desktop is 9 years old and functions great as our community desktop. Great screen and function

Countless arguments on power pcs, operating systems, etc. Those have their place for sure

We added the Apple protection for 3 years which includes screen breakage. Wow

 

[smack]

@Bruce i think you're underestimating the Air , I've run it with an I7 for 4 years as my primary laptop with Parallels running both Win7 and Ubuntu - never had an issue - powers through everything I throw at it. A Pro would definitely have more oomph but I work in 11 different countries and spend a lot of time in planes, lounges and hotels so opt for the lighter weight.

 

[OCMD]

I am ashamed to admit I agree with @Bruce. Edit - Agreeing with Bruce is nothing to be ashamed of but being in a similar line of work and being an apple fan usually does not go hand in hand. I am a data guy and now only own one non-apple laptop for home use. Why? Apple just darn works, all the time, everytime. The last thing I want to be at home is techsupport/admin. 5 iphones, 4 apple tvs, 3 ipads, 2 mac airs, 1 macbook, and 1 apple watch. Yes I am an apple sheep and yes we just bought a brand new mac air for my daughter headed off to college as a freshman. We even pay for extra cloud storage and buy movies direct through apple. I know I am paying through the nose but it works, it works for the whole family, it works everytime.

The one thing I have never had to do. Fix any of those apple devices or spend any time on the phone with tech support except for sending in for a broken screen. No bugs of any kind no driver issues, no registry editing, no windows fresh installs waiting for days for all of the updates and reboots to complete, no command prompt needed. Scratch that I did have to replace a battery in a 2012 mac air. I replaced the battery because the laptop still works great even after 5 years.

Wow, I can say the same with my PC's over the years - especially my current Asus, which I have had for 5 years with zero issues...it just keeps producing.....

 

[BigN8]

Here's the real question. When I buy the computer under the education program and select the wireless Beats.......do I give them to her or keep for myself?!?!?

 

[JetPowered]

What Beats?

 

[BigN8]

@Bruce do I need to buy the Office 365 subscription with this Macbook pro or does it have everything she will need already on it?

 

[smack]

I run the Office 365 Home version on all the kids MacBooks , $99.99 a year for 5 devices , comes with 1Tb of One Drive storage. I'd check with the school first though as they often will have a 365 student program that's more cost effective.

Stuart

 

[BigN8]

Nevermind. I just found on Office.com where she can get a free subscription with a college email address so I'm going to do that.

 

[BigN8]

Once again thanks for all the help fellas. To close this out for anyone else in my shoes I ended up getting the 13" Macbook Pro from Bestbuy. They had them on sale so it was already cheaper than Apple, then I signed up for student savings coupons. I instantly got an email with a coupon bar code that gave me another $150 off the laptop for a grand total savings of $250. Who needs the beats right??

She was very happy with it and that's all that matters...........right?

I also learned that when ordering a protective case for this Macbook Pro with retina display on Amazon you must pay attention to the year of the laptop. My first attempt had a case that was way to big. Aparently the earlier version of the Macbook Pro with retina display was somewhat bigger, so I had to send that one back and find the right one on Amazon. Jeez, this shit is complicated now!