Anyone have any suggestions?

(For Wheel: I'm sure porn will play just fine on it)

Thanks

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac 

I've purchased several (8 or so) refurbs from the Apple site over the years.....been very happy.

Sometimes I buy the extended warranty (laptops)....sometimes not (iMacs)

I would go with a Macbook Pro with a traditional HD.......as opposed to the flash drive.....but that's just me

buy him a small/pocket external drive for backup too

If they plan to leave it stationary most of the time, go for the 15" for a larger screen.

If he wants to "game" on it, get the 15" and the Nvidia graphics card upgrade (or just make him play games on a console).

The Retina display is a huge improvement over the normal but not 100% necessary. The 800px vertical resolution on the 13" standard pro is kind of behind the times. Even my 2010 13" Air has 900px.

Get the non-retina display if he absolutely needs a built in cd/dvd drive. Otherwise you can get a nice, small external drive (which is what I use).

SSDs will make it boot and run a lot faster, but they are a lot smaller per $. 128GB can get filled up faster than you think. Don't expect to store a lot of pictures, music and videos on it.

Honestly pretty much any of the processors will be good for the 4+ years of college.

I would go ahead and go with at least 8GB of RAM for futureproofing.

As with most Apple products, it is going to end up costing more than you wanted to spend, but he'll be very happy with it.

+1 on the refurbs (from apple)- the ones I've purchased looked brand new and had zero problems.

Considering how much isn't user replaceable, the extended warranty on laptops isn't a bad idea (and I got one on my last one). The apple store employees are usually pretty good to you if you have applecare, even if it was accidental damage.

I do use a SSD and I love it. Moves so much faster than traditional hard drives and no noise, less risk of carrying it around while it is spinning and such. But I can fill up the 256GB if I'm not too careful, mainly thanks to iphoto automatically saving any pictures I take from my phone via photostream. iP5 photos are large and photos can add up over time. I do have a 2.5" external HDD for saving any large file and for time machine backups, and a 64GB usb flashdrive on my keychain if I need to move some large files off. Definitely opt for the 2.5" external HDD instead of the 3.5" as the 2.5" generally do no require a power brick, making them far more portable.

Gravity's a beyotch...Dragon dic is inevitable when you're a 🌫

😂