MBA Laptop

I decided to buy ThinkPad Yoga 12 Ultrabook with i7 and 512Gb SSD. Since Lenovo is a corporate standard in MBB consulting, hope it will be enough for MBA studies. Also excited about Digitizer Pen - should be convenient thing.

Should be a good choice.
I would recommend anything light with good battery life (you will be lugging it around quite a bit) and with books and other items it will be a heavy load.
SSD is great as it helps to reduce weight, noise, energy consumption, and potential data loss from physical abuse (though SSD's did (still do?) have a known service limit that is lower than disk-drives resulting into serious data loss, often very suddenly). Thus a backup solution that runs in the background is highly recommended. There are lots of options and many are free for the first few Gigs. Mozy has something and so does Carbonite, etc. I run mine 2x day and it is pretty quick saving docs/etc. You can also work in the Dropbox folder and that saves your changes automatically.

P.S. I do not recommend Chromebooks as you will have Excel and other applications to run on the computer so you do need an OS such as Windows or MacOS.

There are some good deals on the Dell laptops in the Microsoft Store as a part of their Holiday Sale
https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msu ... A9_DellDay

Agreed that you probably don't want to get a Chromebook. You can't really run full apps on them, they seem more for lighter usage, such as internet browsing, etc.

Just started looking to a new laptop for the fall--currently leaning towards a Mac. It looks like Apple is planning to update their line of laptops later this spring--i'm wondering if the current line up (as of today) would be good enough to handle bschool straining tasks or if the newer/faster chips will be that much of a difference for me? Currently looking at the MBP i5 256mb SSD or MB Air spec'd the same...

In the same boat. I am sure they will put something out as the new skylake chips are expected to make most improvements in the battery life segment. These chips are already in windows laptops since the end of the last year. I am looking at the Dell XPS 13 as it has a 13" screen but with such small bezels, is smaller than a MacBook air. The only thing I am waiting for to see from Apple is if the MacBook air would get a screen resolution upgrade because the screens they use now are terrible. Otherwise I would go for the 13" macbook pro with retina display. The 15" lets you get discrete graphics but you don't need that unless you plan do some serious video editing. But as for the Macs available now, they can handle everything for business school right now, no problem. Again, the changes won't be so much power as it is with better batterylife or maybe a slightly new design with some new ports like the USB C but that doesn't matter much for business school. I am also looking at the Razer Blade Stealth which has an incredible screen as well.

The rumors have it the MBP's bezels are getting smaller bringing the screen size to 14 and 16"--all the while keeping the same physical size. Again, rumors so who knows if this is true. Yea, the crap screen on the Air is putting me off at the moment but is the price of the pro worth the retina-premium, especially for business school...once the new lineups come out, i'll have to play around, compare and make a decision. The XPS keeps catching my eyes too--luckily I have some time to think and decide...

Great discussions guys!!! It seems the greatest considerations must be being light and having a good battery life.

The Microsoft Surface book seemed to be pretty impressive!
The keyboard has an additional battery built into it, making the battery life something like 14 hrs.

https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msu ... .325716000

Price is pretty impressive as well!

Makes sense as you will be hauling your laptop everywhere with you and as such you dont want a bulky one. At the same time battery also becomes an important consideration as you will be engaged in discussions, team meetings, class participations wherein you wont remember to charge your laptop. You wouldnt want to have your laptop shut down due to low battery in the middle of a presentation

Yup! MS Surface is what has caught my eye as well lol. If all goes according to plan, that's what I'll be buying.

I've been looking into potential laptops and I have been eyeing the Lenovo X1 Carbon https://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-carbon/. Lightweight, powerful, strong corporate brand. Slightly higher price point than the MS Surface, but I tend to trust Lenovo hardware a bit more than Microsoft.

For me its a battle between the Thinkpad Yoga 12 and the Surface... But most likely the Surface wins it!

I use to have a windows laptop until Windows 8 came out. The bugs and glitches drove me insane so I switched to a macbook pro. The laptops are light, have a great battery life, and last forever. I would personally get one of these because the price ends up meeting the quality. You don't need the best processor the macbook air would meet the potential and benefits if going to school for an MBA.

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon (4th gen) was already mentioned and it is impressive. What is more impressive is X1 Yoga. Basically a Carbon with a fully rotating touch screen and a stylus. It is roughly 250 bucks pricier for the same configuration. Both have 1.2 kgs weight and 8-9hrs of battery life, which tick the boxes. I'll decide btw the two.

I guess there will be back to school sales closer to Aug/Sept. Apple usually has theirs start in July.
I am in the market at the moment for a laptop for a college student - so something less fancy than what MBA folks would want/need and perhaps something lighter as well. Anyone has any suggestions? Something less than $1K for a Macbook or $1,300 for surface or X1?

P.S. Wife has had Asus laptops/netbooks for the last 8 years and they have served her well but she does not do a whole lot with them - they just sit on the kitchen counter turned on all day long without much action. Each has worked 4 years without giving up or dying, which is a better track record than what I have had with Dell (3.5 years for their Lattitudes)