The Macbook serves very well s a college computer. My son took one to college with him and used it for all his school on social activities and used hid PC desktop for gaming. That was 6 years ago and the Mac is still in daily use but he did upgrade his desktop. When he left, my lappie was 2 years old, a year later I replaced it, had another for 3 years and now on my 3rd.
Mine get heavy usage ... CAD during the day and either more work or gaming at night. So I am quite content as long as they last thru their 3 year warranty period. By then they get a bit too sluggish for CAD. If you just want it to work, the Mac is a good solution. The Windows based machines take a lil more effort to own.
As for which one to get, my recommendation is to buy it from someone who actually makes it. The eliminates just about every brand you'd recognize. Dell, HP, Sony, Asus, Apple, Lenovo, Toshiba, etc ..... nope, none of em actually make a laptop.
The vast majority of laptops on the market are manufactured by a small handful of Taiwan-based Original Design Manufacturers (ODM), although their production bases are located mostly in mainland China. Major relationships include:
Quanta sells to (among others) HP, Lenovo, Apple, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, Sony, Fujitsu and NEC
Compal sells to (among others) Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo and HP/Compaq
Wistron (former manufacturing & design division of Acer) sells to Dell, Acer, Lenovo and HP
Inventec sells to Toshiba, HP and Lenovo
Pegatron sells to Asus, Toshiba, Apple, Dell and Acer
Foxconn sells to Asus, Dell, HP and Apple
Flextronics (former Arima Computer Corporation notebook division) sells to HP
Clevo sells direct through distributors or under their retail branding (Sager)
MSI makes their own
Clevo - http
/www.lpc-digital.com/
MSI - http
/us.msi.com/product/nb/
I prefer the Clevos as you approach the build like a custom desktop. Pick ya platform and then add in the specific individual components you like.