Looking to Replace my Mac. US, under $1000.

* **Total budget (in local currency) and country of purchase. Please do not use USD unless purchasing in the US:**

USD 1000, United States. But the less I pay, the better. Just from what I can tell, I can't really get what I'm looking for if I'm not in that price range.


* **Are you open to refurbs/used?**

I'm more open to refurbished than used, but it honestly worries me that it won't last as long as buying something new. So, if you can avoid it, that'd be great, but am also open to you convincing me that refurbished is fine, especially if there's a significant price difference.


* **How would you prioritize form factor (ultrabook, 2-in-1, etc.), build quality, performance, and battery life?**

I want to strike a balance between best value for my money and *not* maxing out my budget. Ranked in order if importance: build quality, performance, battery life, form factor. But I want a 'standard' laptop form.


* **How important is weight and thinness to you?**

Needs to fit easily in a backpack with lots of other stuff in it. Otherwise, don't care too much.


* **Do you have a preferred screen size? If indifferent, put N/A.**

14 inch.


* **Are you doing any CAD/video editing/photo editing/gaming? List which programs/games you desire to run.**

Maybe a little video editing, but not much. If so, I'd want to find a Windows or Linux replacement for Mac iMovie.


* **If you're gaming, do you have certain games you want to play? At what settings and FPS do you want?**

Not a gamer.


* **Any specific requirements such as good keyboard, reliable build quality, touch-screen, finger-print reader, optical drive or good input devices (keyboard/touchpad)?**

I'm coming from an Early 2015 MacBook Pro, meaning that I know whatever trackpad I have won't be nearly as good, so touchscreen would be a very nice plus. Same with a good keyboard and build quality. I can see the value in a fingerprint reader, but not the end of the world if I don't have it. At least 1 USB type A and 1 USB type C (2 type C if one of them would be used for charging), and a headphone jack. A native HDMI would be nice, but not necessary. I keep a lot of things open at once (usually 25+ Notepad windows, 30 Chrome tabs, at least 2 Excel spreadsheets, WhatsApp Web, Facebook Messenger, and 5 or so PDF documents), so based on my primitive understanding, I'd like the insurance of having 16 GB RAM as opposed to 8. And I'd like to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows (Ubuntu mostly to play around and get more comfortable with Linux, but would want to be able to use it 'for real' as well), I'd like to have 512 GB storage, unless I can access all of my files from both OSs, in which case 256 should suffice (but obviously, more is better).


* **Leave any finishing thoughts here that you may feel are necessary and beneficial to the discussion.**

I'll probably buy it in a few months, over the summer, so if the market will look radically different by then, let me know and I'll make a new post in a few months. I'll be using it mainly as a student. So the vast majority of the time will be online, office, Paint/Paint equivalent, plain text editor, PDF viewer, things like that. I also like reliability, so something that will last me around 5 years or more.