Crossing Mazda off my future shopping list ❌

Yeah, you can’t stack discounts. As long you got the best deal available!

Awesome! Did you use the education discount? I forgot to mention that.

Here’s my advice as a Senior Undergraduate Computer Science student and Tier II Service Technician at Apple (a bit biased, I know): get a Mac. If you have the money, a 14" MacBook Pro with M3 Pro, 18 GB of memory, and 512 GB SSD. You won’t regret it. Coming from a Windows PC (a high-end one), I’ve never once thought about switching back. The Mac will outlive the PC in many ways and last a full day of moderate to heavy use. The number of peers in my program who tell me they’re considering a Mac but never buy one and yet complain about how slow or buggy their PC is is astounding.

If you can’t afford a MacBook Pro, buy a MacBook Air with the M3 chip (at least M2) and 16GB of memory (DO NOT buy 8GB).

You can thank me after you graduate with a 3.5+ GPA :)

There’s a 90-day warranty on Genius Bar repairs. Also, in your situation, it’s best to call the store directly and arrange a repair reservation for your Mac. Don’t expect technicians to agree because it would be an exception but if you’re kind and explain your situation I don’t see why they might say no. The only issue is that if the repair is completed in-store, there’s a 3-5 day turnaround time. The other option is to have an Apple repair center complete the repair and ship your computer back straight to you.