Want to buy U33, but some questions..

Hi everyone! About to buy a new laptop, and the U33 seems pretty nice. I was mostly debating between this, the Thinkpad Edge 14, and the Macbook Pro 13".

I plan to use this mainly for school and just browsing the web/watching movies. I'm a computer science major, so I'm definitely going to be doing a lot of typing, which is why the Edge 14 appealed to me. What put me away from it though is that it's pretty thick, and it has integrated Intel graphics. I know that I'm not going to be doing any gaming, but from my experience they are really bad, and I don't want to have any lag when I'm just doing normal tasks at all.

The Macbook is cool because my school is having a sale on it right now so I can get it for $1000, which is $200 off retail I think. The only thing putting me off is the Core 2 Duo, and the lower resolution than other 13" notebooks. I don't really think the Core 2 Duo is much of a big deal though because apparently they still get better battery life and the video card is 320M as opposed to 310M.

Then there's the Asus. I love how it's made of bamboo, and I love how nobody I have seen has one, while Macbooks are EVERYWHERE. It comes with i3/i5 too, which is definitely good and more future proof. Apparently, the build quality is plenty good as well. The only thing I'm worried about though, is the fan noise, the keyboard, and the thickness. The Macbook Pro is really common at school, but that doesn't stop it from being really sexy. I know that the Asus is supposed to have a great design, but how is it just from a dimensional point of view? And how's the keyboard feel? I'm going to be doing a lot of typing as I said, so I don't want to strain my fingers too much.

And, if I took this to class to take notes, would the fan noise be apparent? I guess I might just be paranoid but it really bothers me when I can hear the fan go on after turning the computer on because it keeps making me think everyone's going to be staring at me.

Oh, and I probably will be installing Linux on it, so I'm wondering how the compatibility would be? Lastly, is there anywhere I can buy it besides Amazon? I looked on XoticPC and they have it but only for preorders. I prefer not to buy from Amazon just because they don't allow you to configure it.

 

Asus is hit and miss; if you are unlucky you might get a bad computer which misses keystrokes

 

If your a comp sci major.. and really really into Comp Sci, I'd suggest a Macbook... its great for learning and programming for multiple platforms, since it can run OSX, Windows and Linux... Now if your not really that much into it that you don't find it fun to sit home on a Friday night and write a program, or dig into some internals of an OS to see how they work... you might just wanna stick with a Windows machine.