I need a retina MBP and iPad for college.

[WackyDan]

BEST Advice....

Check with your college first to see if they have a laptop program... This typically is with a specific vendor and nets the student a decent priced bundle, the ability to swap out their laptop for an identical spare, and the college becomes repair authorized and stocks parts... so they can repair your laptop on site. The laptops are typically business class machines...which tend to be far more durable than the consumer grade crap people typically buy.

So put your fanboy status of XYZ vendor aside and buy into that program as it will save you money, and probably save your bacon sometime in that four+ years you are in school there.

Or spend a lot more money on what you want, and find yourself at the mercy of the manufacturer when something goes wrong... and without a platform to work on for an extended period of time.

 

[AstroManLuca]

my how things have changed, i had a 12" Powerbook G4 and people laughed

I had one too. There's a reason they laughed - it was a joke of a computer.

 

[ControlD]

iWork and soon to be Office on ipad, not to mention hundreds if not thousands of more specialized note taking/word processing apps

But it all depends on what you are doing with an Office Suite. I am going out on a limb here, but I am guessing that Office on iOS will not have full VBA functionality including hooks into the OS. Without such it serves no purpose for a lot of Office users.

again, that's not a feature, that's just something you can do on a netbook. What are you doing in the different OSs? .

That IS a feature for many people. If you are taking a programming class and required to write for example a C++ program that runs under the X-Windows environment, having a VM with Linux / BSD / etc. is very handy. Of course you could fight for room in the computer lab, but being able to do it at home or in your dorm is much nicer.

Of course all of this can also be done on a MBP which will be a nicer system than a netbook. An iPad will never allow these things however.

 

[Mxylplyx]

I remember when I would randomly come into possession of one of those fancy $5 pens that write so smooth. Man, that was living.

 

[Dankk]

$2,500 for a laptop? Christ, Apple users must live in a different universe. That's especially troubling for college students to be spending that much on unnecessary hardware.

Last January I picked up a Lenovo Ideapad from Newegg for $500. Quad core CPU, 4GB DDR3, and a 750GB hard drive or something like that. Runs like a charm. The integrated APU graphics can even play a lot of games.

 

[mpo]

except a netbook is a piece of shit and an ipad isn't. I'm surprised it took as long as it did for people to realize that. And please enlighten us to what you can reasonably do on a netbook that you can't do on an ipad. In fact, I'd say that with the amount of apps, an ipad can do more and do it better.

A netbook can connect to a projector with a VGA cable.

 

[darkewaffle]

It sounds like the dude is buying it himself, not really entitlement if he's spending his own cash on it.

 

[Anonemous]

Went without a laptop until my 2nd year of grad school. Used comp labs when I needed to look up things. Now I see elementary school kids using laptops/ipads for their class work. What ever happened to just pencil/pen and paper?

 

[Dr. Zaus]

..... I've always felt writing the notes by hand was more effective. Earth to jackass, I like being able to highlight stuff or quickly flip between pages and reading a text book does that better than reading on a tablet.

Text book; ok...

All the notes for each class are in one place, in chronological order, dated at the top, optionally with labels sticking out for special cases (like a lecture that goes beyond the textbook's content, or mindbending stuff, like e's crazy relationships to everything). If you have to worry about boxes, you are probably just copying the lecture down in shorthand, which seems awfully inefficient (may not apply to post-graduates).

When you start needing to use and integrate the knowledge you gain in ways that are not necessarily "classifiable" then the hierarchical-database-management system becomes less relevant.

 

[Cerb]

When you start needing to use and integrate the knowledge you gain in ways that are not necessarily "classifiable" then the hierarchical-database-management system becomes less relevant.

Brains are excellent for doing that sort of work. Since you have to carry one of them around with you all of the time anyway... :biggrin:

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Brains are excellent for doing that sort of work. Since you have to carry one of them around with you all of the time anyway... :biggrin:

False!

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Do most colleges not have public computers with USB ports? 😕

There's been the occasional moment where the labs were rather full and I wished I had a laptop, but for the most part I don't get it.

 

[yhelothar]

I love my old windows tablet for college. With a wacom tablet and a pen, I never had to print out lecture notes again. It's so much easier to organize my notes digitally. OneNote kicks ass - it lets you record audio notes and it syncs your writing up to the audio so that there's a play button next to each line of notes you write that will bring you to the corresponding part of the recording.
To top it off, I was able to find a pdf for all of my books. My bag was infinitely lighter, and it's so much greener.

Alas, my tablet remained a unicorn. 😵

MBP is way overkill for college. Unless you're an art or cinematic major, the most basic core2duo is more than adequate.

Best college laptop right here...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Lenovo-...33070770?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item1c282c37b2

 

[shortylickens]

Do most colleges not have public computers with USB ports? 😕

There's been the occasional moment where the labs were rather full and I wished I had a laptop, but for the most part I don't get it.

Most campuses I been to dont have nearly enough computers for the number of students. You will need a laptop or wait until you get home to do papers.

 

[Cerb]

False!

False. People were able to handle it hundreds of years ago, long before the concept of a database even existed. Honestly, I'm not sure how you could pass a decent math or hard science course, if you needed a computer to help organize and synthesize notes. Whether you use a computer or not, if you had to rely on one like that, you'd be at a disadvantage to those students who trained themselves to do it mentally.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Cerb, you're out of your element!

Brains are excellent for doing that sort of work. Since you have to carry one of them around with you all of the time anyway...

False

Dude, the excellence of brains is not the issue here!

I'm not sure how you could pass a decent math or hard science course, if you needed a computer to help organize and synthesize notes. Whether you use a computer or not, if you had to rely on one like that, you'd be at a disadvantage to those students who trained themselves to do it mentally.

Also this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n7ZyS_g0DQ

 

[Geekbabe]

Are you reading a different post? He has no sense of entitlement. He didn't say need. All he did was say what he was thinking about getting and ask for people's opinions on different models. What could you possibly find wrong with that?

Agreed! Plus the guy was looking for opinions on the merits of getting the new releases versus picking up a non Retina Pro & an iPad 2. Hell, the kid wants devices that will get him through 4 years of use, of course he wants a beefy configuration.

 

[Cerb]

Cerb, you're out of your element!

Dude, the excellence of brains is not the issue here!

You are claiming that a device that takes many seconds to do anything at all is superior at the work that it shouldn't need to be doing, which your brain should be able to do in a human-scale instant. In that case, the excellence of brains is most certainly an issue.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

I'll probably get a thinkpad and bring my desktop and I'd be fine

 

[TridenT]

Do most colleges not have public computers with USB ports? 😕

There's been the occasional moment where the labs were rather full and I wished I had a laptop, but for the most part I don't get it.

It's true that there are likely many computers at campuses, but sometimes those computers are not where you need them to be. For instance, I sometimes need a laptop for online HW at a study center. Some study centers don't have rentable (give them your ID) laptops or enough desktop computers for use. It's nice to have a laptop in those instances.

 

[0roo0roo]

$2,500 for a laptop? Christ, Apple users must live in a different universe. That's especially troubling for college students to be spending that much on unnecessary hardware.

Last January I picked up a Lenovo Ideapad from Newegg for $500. Quad core CPU, 4GB DDR3, and a 750GB hard drive or something like that. Runs like a charm. The integrated APU graphics can even play a lot of games.

you miss the point😉

why do you need quad core to write your college essays?😉


750gb of what? documents?😉