Why should I buy a rMBP 13" early 2015?

I am looking for a college laptop which can do perfectly exactly that (meaning good keyboard, battery and a very bright screen for some outdoor work maybe) and besides, play smoothly some 4k youtube videos maybe some 1080p mkv movies without stuttering. Stuff like that. Sites say that the hd 6100 is like a gt 830m but because I have never owned a notebook, I don't know what that means when in use.

So, is this the right laptop for me?

P.S.: And I am very curious to know (if somebody can test this): the hd 6100 can run some farmville 2? .
P.S. 2: If I want, can I run Linux on this puppy? Like, plug a usb stick, remove osx completely and just run entirely on a linux environment?

I appreciate your responses!

 

I can't comment on the linux idea, but this would be more than enough laptop for your purposes. Frankly it's overkill. You could save a few bucks and buy a refurb or a used Mac from a few years ago as well for those purposes listed.

 

If those are your requirements, then I think that a relatively inexpensive Windows Laptop would meet your needs.

Boot Camp usually requires booting off your internal drive. I haven't tried it with an external drive (flash drive). I run Windows and Linux on VMs on my Macs.

A non-ultrabook Windows laptop that's thicker with discrete graphics may be better for you. The Retina MacBook Pros are very thin and the fans can spin up pretty high when you're doing graphics-intensive stuff.

 

retinas are also not so great I find for outdoor usage, but then most glossy screens aren't.

 

I'm looking at pulling the trigger on a 2015 13" rMBP, myself. I want something with a relatively small form factor that has some power, and this model has the best CPU/GPU combo this side of a Razer Blade or Asus... Gs50? (their version of the Razer Blade), both of which are considerably more expensive.

 

The only downside is (for me) the os, man...