You can't do better than a mac as far as lifetime and college use. I know anyone that supports mac on the internet is going to burn at the stake but it doesn't change the fact of the matter. Every non-mac laptop I've used or known the owner of one, after ~a year the battery life is reduced to 30 minutes at most if not requiring to be always plugged in. Mac laptops not only keep their battery life for a very long time but their life:charge ratio is very good, especially if you buy the Air.

/end rant bring on the -frags for supporting mac

would a chromebook be workable or do you need anything more?

if you're looking for a lowish budget non-work non-gaming laptop lenovo probably has the best one for you. i would stay away from acer and toshiba.

if you're looking for an ultrabook (compact but sleek and powerful) your best bets are the samsung ATIV book 9, asus zenbook, macbook, or a lenovo something. stay away from acer, dell, toshiba, and hp when shopping at higher price points

Macbooks are not worth the money.

every other laptop with comparable components/size/style/power/reliability is almost the same price, and none of those have hardware (case/keyboard/touchpad) as good as Mac's

Macs are excellent Workstation/lifestyle PC's the only issue is the cost, and on a college student budget. If you have the money go for it. If you want something that will work no matter what, but only has the ability to browse the internet. Go with a chromebook, theyre cost effective and because of how light the OS is, the battery is super great, if youre planning on doing other things, again, a lenovo. If you don't have money for a mac

Macbook air ~$1100 for 4-5 years of use. How much use do you get out of any other laptop? 1-2? for like $500? I'd rather drop $100 to not have to replace my laptop part way through a semester and eliminate the potential of losing all of my data

As much as I detest mac, I'm with Knuckles. If your computer is just for school and that's ALL you're going to use it for, a macbook air is sooo worth the money.

Macs (in my opinion) suck for gaming, but no one can object to their lifespan. Hell, my sister has a macbook air she bought in 2008 that she still uses. Is it the fastest computer ever? No, but it got her through high school, and is currently getting her through college. For how old it is, I'm surprised it still runs as well as it does.

So yeah, mac book for college use all the way.

Is there a solid reason to NOT get a chrome book?

this is a question, I'm wondering if I should get one myself

I don't know what other people are talking about, my laptops usually last about 4-5 years and I've always paid less than $650. I used to always buy Toshiba, but I've had a Acer Aspire V5-571-6806 for the past 2 years with no issues. I don't really see why you would spend twice as much as you need to on a laptop. You really don't need more than about 5 hours of battery life for college. As for weight, unless you are rich it is way better to be carrying around a few extra pounds and have $600 in your pocket imo.

You could probably even get away with a chromebook depending on what you are studying. If you are doing some sort of engineering or math program you probably couldn't, but basically anything else would be fine.

If you are willing to spend the money that a Macbook air costs a Surface Pro is going to do everything the Macbook would do, cost a little less, and not force you to deal with Apple's dreadful bloated operating system.

basically:
you cant game on a macbook
you cant do heavy coding on a macbook
so everyone on tech sites hates macs, and everyone listens to them, and so everyone hates macs
but macs are perfect for the casual computer user, since there's nothing wrong with a casual computer user wanting a nice/fast/expensive computer

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t450s/

Chromebooks are really great imo. If you want to be able to use it as an actual computer instead of just a web browsing device, many of them can run Linux. The only thing to be careful about is storage capacity. For college you should basically have internet everywhere so you could probably just use it as intended. If you need to anything like coding you could just have an ssh server running off of your home computer.

Yeah you're right, you would be hard pressed to find a laptop with as low a resolution screen as the Macbook Air in this day and age, and I can't really think of any computers aside from tablets that offer such a low storage capacity. And of course who could forget the generous 4GB of RAM they give you (luckily Apple loves to use it all with their terribly inefficient OS, so you basically end up with 2-3GB of RAM at all times). It's almost like you could get way better specs for the price.

I was in a similar boat to you last year.
Since I already had a decent gaming pc that i'd brought to uni I decided to buy a chromebook.
It was only $250 I would only use it to bring to lectures and watch stuff on it occasionally, I could keep the money saved for future PC upgrades.
Since i'm a computer science major I found Chrome OS a bit luckluster pretty soon and installed linux on it.

It may not be the best choice, but it'll do the tasks you want from it and it's a good option to save money.

If you do pick a chromebook i'd recommend the Acer C720 (i3 4GB RAM)

You just have to know what battery type is being used in the computer you're using. I still get 3-4 hours on a charge on casual web browsing on my $450 toshiba. Sorry that I don't remember the battery name. I know the issue you're talking about, I had it on my old brick Dell laptop, but the one that I use now doesn't have that issue at all.

chromebooks don't work with twitch very well. i had one a few days ago and took it back

Which chromebook did you have? I might be in the market and I'd like to know what to avoid

http://www.cultofmac.com/162823/linux-creator-linus-torvalds-i-love-my-macbook-air/
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1jxqik/why_do_so_many_programmers_in_the_silicon_valley/
many companies advertise "all developers are given apple hardware" on their recruiting page
etc

you get quality hardware (maybe spec isn't top notch but you have a desktop for that), you get unix and you can run a good amount of normal people software without it being a pain in the dick.

that said, i use a £200 netbook i bought 4 years ago. it survived my compsci degree and is actually plenty fast enough to do things that aren't gaming. i doubt it would be usable with windows on it though and the battery only lasts like 45mins now

edit: https://lobste.rs/s/m32elk/why_i_quit_os_x

if you ignore the title and actually click the link it has some nice discussion

Why? Linux sucks as creative environment, Windows sucks for programming, Mac OS X has both qualities is what I thought for most of my life.

+1 for OSX being great for coding (although a built in package manager would have been nice)
I'd still take Linux or Windows over it any day as a primary OS, but on a laptop or work machine it does meet a nice middle point. If it didn't use so much RAM so as to make the Air actually usable that would be a nice bonus, but on a Macbook Pro it is great to use

Not true, many engineers at various big names I've been at do use macbooks for development. Macbooks were also a staple of many classrooms of SE courses I've taken in the past.

http://www.amazon.com/Zenbook-UX305FA-ASM1-13-3-Inch-Ultra-Slim-Aluminum/dp/B00SGS7ZH4

The Zenbook UX305FA has incredible specs for the price. The Core M processor is a bit less powerful, but on the plus side its decreased power consumption allows for a fanless, silent notebook.

This. I sort of wish that I had a mac solely so I could use the command line. Or you could just dual boot with linux.

I would recommend getting a light windows laptop, like the acer aspire s7 and then dual booting to linux, if you plan on doing any developing