Heh, I basically had those same thoughts going into college 3 years ago, except I went with more of a gaming computer, but to be honest after freshmen year I really haven't used it for gaming (and of course its become more or less obsolete) I would just keep in mind that with college you have more free time but the majority of mine went to hanging out with friends/school work/organizations... I'd keep it simple, I kind of regret throwing down about 1k for my computer now because its really only used to visit webc omics and play the random game or two.
eh..everything suggested in the thread pre-macbook blows them away specwise for less money. For someone who doesn't want the OS (Which the OP mentioned) they're a bad buy.
They're light, small, and cool. Enough said.
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My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
I've been thinking about upgrading to a laptop when I move. I just want something that will run Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3. Whenever they come out.
A macbook or macbook pro (the new ones) should just fine, not promises but Blizz have always treated mac users well with the dual CD's / DVD's and all that, they like having a big user base so I imagine both will be optimised to run on the macbook at some level and should be just fine on the pro.
I love my XPS M1530 (that's not a recommendation - they're due for a spec update anytime soon as they're a year or so behind now). I've got a proper gaming rig but I'm not sure I would replace it if something happened to it as the laptop is capable of doing pretty much everything I need. Just being able to take it home to visit parents and keeping all your work, drag it down to the library/coffee shop when I need a change of scenery or bring it on over to friends for some impromptu lan gaming is awesome.
Graphics card wise, this is probably the most important choice you'll make as everything else pretty much depends on it. A 9800M trashes the 9600M in terms of performance on games, but you'll see a shit battery life, a larger chasis - much heavier and usually pretty fugly to boot.
I think something like a 9600M (which is mostly a higher clocked 8600M - although I'm sure there's other differences) is pretty much what you want to go for. It's good enough to play games in medium-high settings at 30-60fps in most cases (Left 4 Dead, Company of Heroes, RA3, UT3), and can just about run high spec games out at the moment (Crysis, GTA IV).
At a 15.4" Screen size for regular use (e.g. word processing/interwebs and gaming) you want 1440x900. 1280x800 is just too little screen estate, 1680x1050 is too much for me, my friend has a laptop with that and he complains about it and I can see why. This is of course very subjective but unless you specifically know you want the higher resolution (image manipulation/spreadsheets) I wouldn't go for it.
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They're light, small, and cool. Enough said.
A macbook or macbook pro (the new ones) should just fine, not promises but Blizz have always treated mac users well with the dual CD's / DVD's and all that, they like having a big user base so I imagine both will be optimised to run on the macbook at some level and should be just fine on the pro.
Graphics card wise, this is probably the most important choice you'll make as everything else pretty much depends on it. A 9800M trashes the 9600M in terms of performance on games, but you'll see a shit battery life, a larger chasis - much heavier and usually pretty fugly to boot.
I think something like a 9600M (which is mostly a higher clocked 8600M - although I'm sure there's other differences) is pretty much what you want to go for. It's good enough to play games in medium-high settings at 30-60fps in most cases (Left 4 Dead, Company of Heroes, RA3, UT3), and can just about run high spec games out at the moment (Crysis, GTA IV).
At a 15.4" Screen size for regular use (e.g. word processing/interwebs and gaming) you want 1440x900. 1280x800 is just too little screen estate, 1680x1050 is too much for me, my friend has a laptop with that and he complains about it and I can see why. This is of course very subjective but unless you specifically know you want the higher resolution (image manipulation/spreadsheets) I wouldn't go for it.