<p>I'll be buying a new laptop soon, and I'm just curious: what laptops do you guys use and would you recommend it to others?</p>
<p>I’ve got an ASUS N550J. I’ve been very pleased with it. I spent a little over $1000. Intel Core i7, NVIDIA GT750M, 1 TB hard drive, 8 gb ram. It’s got Windows 8.1 with a touchscreen. Backlit keyboard. I’d recommend it. </p>
<p>Lenovo makes some very nice laptops too. </p>
<p>I have a MacBook Air and I love it. It’s the 13 inch one and it is really light so it is easy to carry around with me in my bag. I have a case for it of course. Yes they are expensive but I paid half and my parents paid the other half. </p>
<p>@comfortablycurt </p>
<p>how is the battery life in that though? I’ve been looking at that and similar-tier laptops like the y50, and my only concern is the battery life (and I suppose, heat generation by gpu). do you find it lasting a decent amount when not using the gpu?</p>
<p>Battery life is my only real complaint with it. I average about 3.5-4 hours on the battery depending on how I’m using it. I generally use it only at home though, so that wasn’t a big concern for me. I rarely bring it with to class. </p>
<p>It does get fairly warm too. I game a fair amount, and after gaming for extended periods, it’ll be pretty warm. With good ventilation though, it’s not bad. </p>
<p>If battery life is a big concern though, I’d recommend going with something else. </p>
<p>Basic 2014 Macbook Pro 15" w/ Retina display. It’s really nice, I wouldn’t like a laptop with below a 15" screen.</p>
<p>We are strictly (and happily) Apple-based in my house. As far as laptops go, we’ve got a 13-inch pro with retina, a 13-inch Air, and I just got a brand new 11 inch Air that I absolutely <em>love</em> and got a killer deal on (Best Buy had it on sale for $799 and is offering $100 off for college students/profs/staff – basically anyone with a .edu account – so I paid $699 for it). I’ve been traveling a lot and am looking forward to being on the road with it…long battery life and not much bigger (or heavier) than an iPad. </p>
<p>+1 on Macbook. I use PC laptops at work, Macbooks at home. My current Macbook gets better battery life than any laptop I have ever owned, PC or Mac. As a bonus, it’s far lighter in my backpack than my heavy work laptop.</p>
<p>Macs are said to be “expensive”, but really on a component-for-component basis they are comparable to PC laptop prices. They just tend to use higher-end components that cost more. The education discount definitely helps to take the edge off of the pricing.</p>
<p>Another benefit, and I say this as someone who has worked as an IT administrator for two different universities, is that while Macs are not totally immune to viruses the worst I ever saw a Mac on campus have was a mild cold. PC, on the other hand…flesh eating bacteria. For many reasons, college campuses are a breeding ground for infectious software epidemics. </p>
<p>If you do opt to get a PC laptop for the cheaper hardware, install Linux or get one you can Hackintosh to install OSX. That change alone can save you a lot of grief.</p>
<p>yeah im considering a macbook and running all 3 OS’s on parallels since ill be a CS student, but im just wary of the inconvenience of having to switch to Windows to run certain programs</p>
<p>If you’re doing CS, there shouldn’t be too many things you can’t run in Parallels or VMWare Fusion. I have Fusion on mine and I can’t even remember the last time I had to use Boot Camp instead.</p>
<p>Hardcore gaming, video editing, audio recording…those could require Boot Camp. Maybe building EXEs in Visual Studio, but I avoid VS like the plague so I don’t know. </p>
<p>It depends on what you’ll be using it for, I think. I have a Macbook Pro Retina and I’d definitely recommend it–it’s sleek, easy to use and relatively lightweight. A lot of computer science majors I know use Macbooks as well and run Ubuntu on it.</p>
<p>I have a 13.3" MacBook Pro - the non-Retina kind. I bought it in the spring of 2012, so the computer is 2.5 years old. I’ve owned quite a few PCs before - a couple of Dells, a Sony, two Toshibas, etc.</p>
<p>The MacBook is the one that has given me the least problems this far into the life cycle. The only issue I’ve had is that one of my USB ports on the side has gone dead; I probably could’ve gone to the Apple store and had them look at it, but I just haven’t needed or wanted to out of laziness. I still have a couple of months of AppleCare left over, so maybe I’ll do that before it runs out. At the time MacBooks advertised something like 5 hours of battery life. When I bought the computer, with WiFi on and at 50% brightness (plenty bright enough to work) I actually got 5 hours of battery life (more like 6-7 with WiFi off). 2.5 years later, I still get 5 hours of battery life under the same conditions. The new MacBooks have more battery life and are even lighter than mine (which is something like 5 lbs). The only thing I’ve done was upgrade the RAM from 4 GB to 8 GB, which I did myself and took me 10 minutes. </p>
<p>But I like the MacBook not just because of its durability and longevity but because I just prefer the operating system and the ease with which I can sync my work. I got an iMac at work (I am the only one at my job with an Apple computer, lol) and I love the way iCloud syncs my calendar and reminders across from my laptop at home, my iMac, my iPad and my iPhone. I don’t have to worry about which device I use to update my calendar.</p>
<p>If you want a PC, though, some brands are good computers too - you just need to invest in a PC that has the same durability and similar components as an Apple computer. Personally I liked Toshiba; they were some of the longer-lasting shells I’ve gotten. They’re built kind of bulkily but my husband’s Toshiba lasted him 5 years before it gave out. My Toshiba Satellite gave me ~3 hours of battery life; it started flickering a bit early in its lifecycle, though (plus I got greedy and wanted to switch to Mac). Dells can also be pretty decent computers; my Dells lasted me about ~3 years each. I’ve also heard good things about Lenovos. I had an IBM Thinkpad - it was my first college laptop, and it was a tank. I only traded it in because I wanted something lighter, but I gave it to my aunt and she had it 6 years later and it was still running, just slowly.</p>
<p>I hated my Sony. It was flimsy and gave out on me less than 2 years in. The only advantage to it is that it looked pretty.</p>
<p>MACBOOK PRO.</p>