This is what I did last weekend, during tax-free weekend no less. The only catch is the laptop has to be $699 or higher and you must have the coupon and student ID to claim the Xbox.
I did all this. I bought a $749 Toshiba, $811 with tax, then sold the xbox for $160 and got $15 certificate from best buy rewards zone. Ended up being a really good deal.
Get a PC. I'm pretty sure Microsoft have great deals for Students. If you can wait a little longer Microsoft Surface is being release around the end of October. Even if you buy a laptop with Windows 7, you can upgrade later on to Windows 8 for $$39.99. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows/upgrade-offer http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/students/default.aspx#fbid=vkK5T93TvEe http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/en_US/cat/categoryID.37826100
Used 2011 MacBook Air for around 1k. Make sure it's 4 GB ram and if you're worried about performance find one with SSD Perfect for college and work if you're lucky enough
Staples. They always have random weekly ads that get to great prices... And those combined with the emailed coupons (typically take $150 off this laptop etc....) Some weeks are better than others. I just bought a Toshiba Tablet for my little sister for $349 after MIR.....$370 before it. http://weeklyad.staples.com/Staples...oncode=Staples-120805&listingid=0&sneakpeek=N
Thanks for all of the suggestions. I love my new retina macbook, but I cuss it sometimes too. Sometimes "insanely easy" can be "insanely stupid." But I have time to figure it all out. My nephew has a bit of dyslexia (though he made it through Jesuit in Dallas with pretty decent grades), so I don't want to make him learn a new OS while still trying to get an engineering degree. And although they found a way to pay for his school, I know they need to watch their budget, so I just don't want to pressure them into getting a mac. He's knows windows, so that's what I'm going to shoot for. I definitely respect the comment about getting something sturdy that can be knocked around a bit, so I will lean towards that. Unfortunately, we missed out on a deal last week for an ivy bridge i5 ideapad with 8 gigs of ram for only $399 (seems almost too good to be true......which might be why they were "sold out"). Anyway, I'm going to keep looking a bit. For those of you who like slickdeals, I looked at dealnews today and really like that site quite a bit. Just need to find the right deal....or suck it up and realize that I'm not going to find last week's deal.
Great HP DV6 laptop with no defects and is in grade A condition. It has a finger print reader for extra security. http://www.cedarpc.com/product/25330/HP-Pavilion-dv6-1149wm--25330/ http://www.cedarpc.com/pages/Interstitial_Content_Box_2/refurbished.htm
My 20yr old FSU niece. No! the high school newbies here would go viral on her. But, I might be talked into a brief pic of her in the Styx forum for my vet friends, just so you know where I get my protection instincts from. And I have 11 other nieces, too.
I convinced my mom to buy a MacBook Air and she loves it. My rationale was she was looking for a thin/light laptop like an MBA, why not just get an MBA. I immediately boot-camped it with Windows 7 and she uses that as her primary operating system. She literally never touched the OSX partition.
Toshiba Satellite P855-S5200 Core i7 8gb RAM 750 gb HDD The games work rather well on it too. Ended up costing $650 down from $850 + $15 certificate. Not bad.
You can run windows on a $200 laptop. That wasn't the issue. The Air itself is a beautifully engineered piece of machinery. The build quality is second to none and little things like the quality of the trackpad and the ability to just walk into an Apple store and get your laptop repaired are priceless. Something I think a lot of people don't realize is about Apple laptops is that if you take the time to find an extremely comparable PC equivalent, down to the individual parts and build quality, the price is often very close.
Perfect example. This laptop clearly has more power under the hood than a MBA and it's considerably cheaper to boot. It's probably a plastic shell, weighs almost double a MBA, lacks little things like the apple trackpad and even bluetooth, is considerably larger to haul around, has a much lower DPI screen, has half the battery life and is probably a total sh`t to get serviced. It's like the difference between a Mustang GT and a entry level Beemer. The stang has a lot more under the hood but the Beemer has the little touches that add up substantially. Both are good cars and no one is stupid for buying one over the other.
