<p>Just went to Best Buy to check out the Macs with plans to use the $150 discount. Have to say its hard to pass up a Mac Air for $950 - $150! </p>
<p>Incidentally, Best Buy"s three year warranty quote - close to $500! (What?!)). Squaretrade, $225.</p>
<p>abasket,</p>
<p>The most inexpensive macbook air is $650 after the $150 coupon and another $100 discount added on top of it.</p>
<p>Wow that is too cheap. Is that for student only?</p>
<p>That model has the 11ish inch screen - too small for us!!</p>
<p>DrGoogle,</p>
<p>The $150 coupons and the $100 deal are technically for students only. In practice, you just need a .edu email address to get the coupons and take advantage of the deal.</p>
<p>I’ve bought all of our macs through our kid’s book store. They automatically give you educational discount, and they also have sales around graduation time. It maybe worth your while to check out your kid’s school book store.</p>
<p>he’s not doing anything to shop for a computer and I’m getting really annoyed. if someone told me I could get myself a new computer it would be in my hands by now</p>
<p>My oldest runs Linux and doesn’t worry about viruses at all. The rest of us run Norton. We generally find that laptops last about four years and then fans go or software gets greedy and you start getting the lust to upgrade. Both my kids have had gaming laptops, but it’s their job to figure out what they want not mine! I think they’ve gone for Asus recently, but I wouldn’t swear to it.</p>
<p>Thanks to @cobrat for the tip on the Best Buy discounts with an .edu address. Picked up this computer yesterday:
<a href=“http://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-macbook-air-latest-model-13-3-display-intel-core-i5-4gb-memory-128gb-flash-storage/2712009.p?id=1219076158205&skuId=2712009&st=student-deals-mac-123070&cp=1&lp=9”>http://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-macbook-air-latest-model-13-3-display-intel-core-i5-4gb-memory-128gb-flash-storage/2712009.p?id=1219076158205&skuId=2712009&st=student-deals-mac-123070&cp=1&lp=9</a></p>
<p>Originally $999, on sale for $949, take off $150 student discount, plus if you sign up for a Best Buy credit card and put the purchase on it you receive another 10% off (about $85 - which will be Best Buy $$) and then BB rewards points/$$$ on top of that. I’ll be buying an extended warranty through Square Trade - 3 years for $190 - MUCH, MUCH cheaper than the Geek Squad warranty.</p>
<p>So thrilled - don’t think we ended up spending much more than we would have on a PC - didn’t need a lot of memory capacity so this is perfect. REALLY appreciate the tip! </p>
<p>BTW, the people at Best Buy could not indicate how long the sale/discounts would be on - however when we went received the discount code in email, it said it expired July 12 - and one time use only - but that may be that they just give you 10 days or so to get your rear in the store to purchase. </p>
<p>I also went with Besy Buy, but a PC model (HP) with some extras for better media quality, on sale. Nephew is not goign directly to college (military) so no edu address, but I still got great deal. We’re sending him the rest of what we collected in a gift card and he can purchase games or whatever he likes. Thanks for the help, everyone.</p>
<p>
My daughter was like this last year. I gave her the money after she graduated as a gift for computer and extras, she waited and waited until the absolutely last minute to buy her lap top.</p>
<p>@overtheedge I never had a personal laptop in HS, so I ordered a Windows Surface Pro 3 a few weeks ago using some of my savings. So far I absolutely love it. It’s light, fast, and has everything any student could need and then some. Really good battery power as well. I compared it to the macbook air my friend also just bought for freshman year and I personally like the surface better. I’m a STEM major, but love art and drawing, and the surface easily doubles as a portable drawing tablet. To buy a Wacom drawing tablet with the same capabilities would run one $1600 (Cintiq model, their only portable model) so this was a huge plus for me. </p>
<p>The only con is the price. I have a really nice hard drive, so I just got the 128GB version and it cost $999. Using microsoft’s student discount, I paid $1200 total for the surface pro 3, the type cover, tax, office personal, and a surface sleeve. Not bad considering it would have been $1400 without the student discount, but still too much in my opinion. Surface pro 2s are now really cheap on amazon, and the only difference between the two is that the surface pro 3 has a bigger screen. If your D or S doesn’t mind a smaller screen, I’d opt for the surface pro 2 as you’ll get a lot more bang for your buck buying a slightly used one.</p>