Buying a new laptop. Suggestions?!

I am looking into the Macbook and have a budget of $1,200. Which model is your fav and why? I only want the laptop for college purposes, and small collection of documents, pic, vids, movies, songs, etc.

Do you prefer other brands?

Apple? That's horrible...overpriced piece of junk.

Buy an Asus with a matte screen.

Apple? What are you, an art student with a trust fund? I kid...kind of. For the uses you mentioned, any $400 laptop will do it but I suggest getting at least a current Core i5 machine.

For $550, you can get a very capable laptop like this i5 machine:
http://www.costco.com/Lenovo-G510-La...100097415.html

If you need a lot of muscle, this one has a dedicated Nvidia graphics card so you can play games and render graphics and such:
http://www.costco.com/Lenovo-Y510p-L...100097425.html


If you want a desktop replacement with a big monitor, something like this is very good. It's an i7, plenty of RAM and hard disk space and for $949, you get far more than you do with the apple. I've had very good luck with Lenovo products myself:
http://www.costco.com/Lenovo-Z710-La...100097418.html

If you like apple products (Iphone, Ipad, etc.) then you'll like the MacBook. But if you're used to other devices and having more freedom when it comes to apps, I would go for another brand. My wife got a MacBook last year and she loves it. But she has her Iphone and Ipad too so she loves the idea of having everything sync in each device. I myself prefer other brands.

I recently bought a Samsung Ativ 5 and it's perfect for college purposes. It's an ultrabook so it's really light and not a hassle to carry around. It has an i5 core and haven't had any issues. The only thing is that if you like to do homework outside like at the park, there's quite a bit of glare on the screen.
Apple laptops are overpriced for what you get.

Very true...some people have their entire lives in the Apple ecosystem and once you're in, it's hard to get out.

You should keep an eye out for Slickdeals, I just saw these two there

Asus - Good brand,

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Asus-ULTRABO...epn=5337259887

Brand Asus
Model S500CA-SI30401U
Processor Intel Core i3-3217U 1.8 GHz
Hard Drive
500GB 5400rpm SATA + 24GB SSD
Memory 4GB DDR3 SD RAM
Screen Size 15.0" TOUCHSCREEN WXGA HD LED Backlit Display 1366 x 768
Optical Drive None
Graphics UMA
LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps


Or if youre looking at the mac side

Apple Air $650 with EDU email

http://slickdeals.net/f/6902813-appl...email-required


apple laptops have a good resell value dont forget about that

I personally HATE laptops with windows OS. They're a POS. You definitely don't want to be THAT guy where the people glare at because your laptop fan goes crazy at startup. Don't even get me started with all the updates it need constantly either or the bloatware. I have a Macbook Air 11inch and I absolutely love it. I have a love hate relationship with the screen because sometimes I wish I'd bought the 13in but most times it's fine for what I use it for. My friend has a 13inch Macbook Pro and she says she doesn't understand why anybody would NOT want to use a Mac. Mind you both us aren't apple crazy and on our first Macbook. Had my Macbook for little over 2 years with no problem at all.

I bought my Macbook maybe 2 year after I bought an $800 HP laptop. Complete waste of money. I customized it on the website to the configurations I want and everything. The fan started going crazy right outside of warranty and it never shut off the whole time it's on. Friend had a Vaio and that thing was piece of junk. I bought my mom a $500 Asus and she complained that the laptop is so crappy and that she wants something else. She only uses it for TV shows so no heavy usage or multitasking. I still have my HP but I'm just waiting till I can send it to laptop graveyard since I have windows on my Macbook for all the windows only programs.

MacBooks have crazy good battery life as well and you won't have to deal with windows 8