It has a solid state drive, which is great for laptops since you dont have to worry about the disk jumping and it boots up faster, and if your on the go these two things alone are worth their weight in gold.

1. It is small in size and weight for being a 15inch screen, I travel alot with my old laptop and it was around 5lbs and 13 inches needless to say this takes its toll on you.
   
2. It has 8 gigs of ram standard, 4gigs now aday is like the bare minimum so that it has 4 extra gigs is another ++
   
3. Quad core ivy bridge processor, even tho I havent used it yet I've heard alot of great things from it.
   
4. 7 hour battery life, so you dont have to constantly be plugged in.
   
5. Great graphics card on a laptop.
   
6. New design makes this laptop alot quieter so if hes pulling late night sessions he/roomates/classmates dont have to hear an annoying whirring sound.
   

The first 5 are pretty standard affair if you're getting a new laptop. The last one is give and take, but honestly all the major manufacturers have sweet laptops right now. A lot of the Windows 8 laptops coming this year are pretty good looking too. iirc the thinkpads were pretty sweet. Alienware laptops, which are notoriously overpriced, even come in at cheaper than Apple's new macbook.

A solid comparison would probably be the Lenovo Thinkpads/ideapads. They have a pretty solid range of laptops.

edit: [s]to compare the samsung series 9 is $1000 cheaper, and the only major difference is the screen.[/s] this is more to compete with the air after looking more.

double edit: and this guy is $300 cheaper and has it beat almost across the board.

I think for most people in college, a desktop gains precious little mileage. I was always intent on having a desktop, and only acquired a laptop quite late into my school career. I don't regret that course of action at all, but I also dislike working in computer labs, libraries, etc. Nowadays, my favorite configuration is an ultrabook plus a desktop, but that's not a cheap route. A single good laptop might be a better choice.

That said, be careful about what specs you use to pick the computer. RAM and SSD are going to matter much more than the processor. You'll also want something relatively lightweight and with long battery life. In other words, don't buy one of the desktop replacement notebooks. It's also important to get something that is built solidly, because it's probably going to be dragged all over the place. I'm wary of polycarb shells for that reason; obviously the Macbook Pro scores extremely well on all of these fronts, but you pay dearly for it.

solid comparison would probably be the Lenovo Thinkpads/ideapads. They have a pretty solid range of laptops.

edit: to compare the samsung series 9 is $1000 cheaper, and the only major difference is the screen. this is more to compete with the air after looking more.

double edit: and this guy is $300 cheaper and has it beat almost across the board.

that guy is 9 lbs and 17inches big, That's not even a laptop its a mobile desktop. It even says it in its category ( it beats it in one category memory)

Category Desktop replacement


The retina has a display of 1800 verticle pixels so theres nothing in the market that can compare with it real estate wise. The battery life upon research is also only a few minutes above 3 hours. He would have to be constantly plugged in, and there isnt always a power jack available in college especially in a lecture hall. Honestly for 200$ cheaper this would be a bad investment in my opinion. Unless of course he was just going to leave that in his Dorm room the whole time, in which case he might as well buy a desktop thats even stronger for close to half that price.

9 Lbs is far to heavy to be carrying on anyones back, and a 17 inch display means he cant just pop it in his book bag, he would have to carry an extra bullky carrying case which would get really annoying after a while (I travel ALOT with my laptop and 5 lbs is honestly taking its toll on me).

laptops do have alot of those configurations, but one laptop with all of them is HARD (havent seen it yet) to come by.

RAM and SSD are going to matter much more than the processor. You'll also want something relatively lightweight and with long battery life. In other words, don't buy one of the desktop replacement notebooks.

Ditto, one of the biggest mistakes I've made while younger was looking to get a "desktop replacement" laptop but now I know what are the things I value most about purchasing a new laptop.

that guy is 9 lbs and 17inches big, That's not even a laptop its a mobile desktop. It even says it in its category ( it beats it in one category memory)

The point was that that's the most expensive alienware laptop and it's $300 cheaper. You can get the smaller ones, which will still perform as well, and save $500+ too. I wouldn't buy the alienware. It was just an example of a brand that's overpriced's most expensive option being cheaper than Apple's offering.

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif]

[background=rgb(250, 251, 252)] The battery life upon research is also only a few minutes above 3 hours. He would have to be constantly plugged in, and there isnt always a power jack available in college especially in a lecture hall.[/quote][/background]

[/font]
Maybe a couple years ago. Almost all of my classes had outlets for every seat in the classroom. Battery life is more important to me now than it was in university by far. My university was forward thinking in that regard though.

9 Lbs is far to heavy to be carrying on anyones back, and a 17 inch display means he cant just pop it in his book bag, he would have to carry an extra bullky carrying case which would get really annoying after a while (I travel ALOT with my laptop and 5 lbs is honestly taking its toll on me).[/quote]
That's like the weight of a single text book.

laptops do have alot of those configurations, but one laptop with all of them is HARD (havent seen it yet) to come by.[/quote]
the point is whether or not the differences are worth close to the price of an entire extra laptop.

http://reviews.cnet.com/laptop-reviews/?filter=1101502_126029_&tag=columnSpan.0#maxPrice=2119&filter=1101502_9614452_1101502_126029_500035_128072_500035_128317&sort=edRating7%20desc

There are literally hundreds of options for nearly half the price that will suit you just as well. In many cases even better.

The retina has a display of 1800 verticle pixels so theres nothing in the market that can compare with it real estate wise.

This is misleading. The maximum desktop resolution is 1920x1200 and the default is set to 1440x900. There are plenty of 1080p laptops out there at 15.4" or larger.

The battery life upon research is also only a few minutes above 3 hours.[/quote]
I've got a Macbook Pro Retina on my lap as I type this. The 7 hour figure is under optimal circumstances. Right now I have been on here for about an hour, and the battery bar say I have just under two hours left. Sure, if I wanted to drop my backlight to almost nothing, and not run any applications which use the CPU or GPU I could get close to what they claim, but that's hardly real-world usage.

9 Lbs is far to heavy to be carrying on anyones back, and a 17 inch display means he cant just pop it in his book bag, he would have to carry an extra bullky carrying case which would get really annoying after a while (I travel ALOT with my laptop and 5 lbs is honestly taking its toll on me).[/quote]

AGREED! There are some 15.4" laptops with reasonable weight, but I commute daily on my motorcycle and back pressure was one of the reasons I went ahead and paid extra for a MBP. Don't get me wrong, I love my MBP, but if I was on a budget, it would definitely not be my first choice. While it has an insane max resolution, it doesn't come into play that often and to be honest I'm not blown away by the screen like everyone else seems to be. I had a clevo from xoticpc which had a fantastic 1080p screen which is definitely in the same category as the retina as far as impressive screens go.

For a budget of $1,500, there is no bang for your buck like a Clevo. Take a look at the 9150 or 9130 which you can configure to have the same CPU, same hard drive and 16GB of ram for just over $1,300. If you just want the same power as the MBP, you can have them for over $1000 less and still have a top-notch screen. Plus you still get a dvd drive ;)

http://www.xoticpc.c...em1-p-4340.html

Edit: The other thing to keep in mind here is there is no upgrading your MBP after purchase. Want a bigger hard drive? More ram? Too bad. These are trivial upgrades in most PC laptops and can mean a significant savings up front and allow you to upgrade to things like 512GB SSDs when they become more reasonably priced. I actually always purchase PC laptops without an SSD and buy and install my own to save $. The other interesting thing about the Clevo 9150 is that you can also upgrade the GPU which very few laptops will lets you do. Just some more things to keep in mind.

[quote name='The_Neverending_Loop' timestamp='1341423314' post='4955674']
The retina has a display of 1800 verticle pixels so theres nothing in the market that can compare with it real estate wise.

This is misleading. The maximum desktop resolution is 1920x1200 and the default is set to 1440x900. There are plenty of 1080p laptops out there at 15.4" or larger.
[/quote]

Wait, what?

Maybe I wasn't clear. Whatever you build compare it to a clevo configuration using those links. Chances are you can build a cheaper and more powerful laptop.
Use these to compare cpus and gpus. The numbers of cards don't correspond to power.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

[quote name='tstrimple' timestamp='1341433559' post='4955727']
[quote name='The_Neverending_Loop' timestamp='1341423314' post='4955674']
The retina has a display of 1800 verticle pixels so theres nothing in the market that can compare with it real estate wise.

This is misleading. The maximum desktop resolution is 1920x1200 and the default is set to 1440x900. There are plenty of 1080p laptops out there at 15.4" or larger.
[/quote]

Wait, what?
[/quote]

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/21/running-the-retina-macbook-pro-at-full-2880x1800-resolution/

[color=#041427][font=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]

While Apple's new Retina MacBook Pro includes a display measuring 2880x1800 pixels, the default display options do not allow users to run their systems at that raw resolution. Instead, the extra pixels are used to display a higher level of detail on a canvas representing the previous 1440x900 resolution. As a result, windows and user interface elements appear to be the same relative size as on a 1440x900 15" display, but with four times the detail.[/font][/quote]

Here is a screenshot of the entire display when using the "retina" resolution. It fits a single post on the screen at a time. So much for all that extra screen real-estate.

Sublime Text at recommended resolution:


Sublime Text at "maximum" resolution: