I have a Macbook and love it. It depends on what you will be doing with it. The Macbook Pro's come with larger screens, Firewire 800/400, and they have dedicated video memory. The Macbook's memory is shared. But I never had a problem. The Macbook also just has Firewire 400 which also is not a problem, it's still plenty fast. I have a Core Duo 1.83 Ghz with 2GB of ram and the laptop is extremely fast. But if you are doing heavy graphics or gaming, and you need Firwire 800, you may want to get a Pro, but for most, a regular Mackbook is fine.I personally think that a Mac is a great choice for a notebook (will be getting one myself when the time comes for a desktop and laptop...). Very stable, good customer support and easy to use. As for college, a regular Macbook will probably do fine, unless you want to do gaming. One other thing to remember with Macs, they may be a little more expensive when purchasing, but they also hold their value much better as well...