Before the school year started, I decided that it would be a good idea to build my own computer. I came to this conclusion for multiple reasons: getting a better computer for a lower price, being able to customize nearly every aspect of it, learning how it's done since I'm a Computer Science major, etc. I ended up spending a pretty penny to make sure this computer would be beneficial to me throughout my last year of school, as well as last me for a few years.
What I didn't realize was that in my classes, it would prove necessary to have a portable device with better specs than the Asus Transformer T100. It isn't a bad device, per se, but it was insufficient for my needs in class. After a few class sessions, I started to realize this fact, and began to stress out. I had just spent a significant amount of money on a desktop, and now I had to buy a laptop as well.
So, I did what I'm sure every college kid does: I started looking for the deals. I started with Dell because my university has an ongoing student deal with them. Even with this discount though, the prices just seemed too high. Then, I began looking at sites, such as Woot, Newegg, and TigerDirect. These sites, as always, had some very good deals, but either the price was good and the hardware wasn't, or the hardware was good and the price was too high.
Throughout this time, I had been looking at Windows laptops, because I "knew" them to be the cheaper option. Finally, my brother-in-law suggested I check out refurbished Apple laptops. At first, I was skeptical, especially when looking at the prices. I was hoping to not spend much on this laptop, but it was looking like that wouldn't be possible. This was ultimately the fact that helped me make my decision. I determined that if I was going to spend the money anyway, I may as well spend it on a trusted device with an operating system I am less familiar with in order to improve my skills in my field, so I went with a MacBook Air.
While this was a particularly frustrating experience, I do believe that greater forces are always at work. I know that this experience, though not ideal, will ultimately help me to, at the very least, learn some new things. It's been an interesting process to learn OS X after years of dealing solely with Windows. There's still a lot to learn, but this refurbished laptop is refurbishing me.