Riyko said:
You need one, specifically a Mac, for college? Unless you're taking courses specific to Mac systems and software, I can't see that as being a reasonable requirement. But as others have said, implicitly and explicitly, what you should get depends on what you need to do with it. I've never owned a Mac, I've used a dual boot XP and Mandrake Linux system for years, and I find the only reason to keep XP around is for a couple of games I like to play. The literature seems to suggest that for various multimedia applications and desktop publishing features the Macs are superior to Windows, but since I don't do that sort of thing I really can't comment on it.
But if all you need are standard college student automation functions, like word processing for essays and reports and notes, and maybe a spreadsheet for lab work or something, you can get a Dell laptop for under $700 that'll do all that (they're not entirely crap, despite drmarat's remarks to the contrary), with a warranty that'll last as long as you're in college, and you can just throw it away and get a real computer when you graduate and have a real job and can afford to buy what you really want...
And about the "not entirely crap" part there: my last employer (before I retired last April) had a 3-year replacement cycle on computers, and every spring would put out a Request for Proposal asking for price quotes for several hundred servers, PCs, and laptops. I was in charge of networks and telecommunications systems, so I was always involved in that. Dell won the bid about 3 times out of 5 on at least one of those components. We also had to deal with Toshiba, Sony, HP, Compaq, and IBM systems, because sometimes they won parts of the bid. My experience is that Dell is no better and no worse than anybody else. There are four computers in my house, three of them are Dells (mine is the only one that isn't, I built it myself), and service and reliability from Dell has been pretty good.