Laptop for School

[JoshK]

So currently, my school has school issued iPads for all the students. They are iPad threes and cant even barely run iOS 8. I am getting sick of our schools shananigans with their absolutely terrible tech team and decided that I want to take matters into my own hands and get a windows based laptop with possibly another boot partion for OSX(reason will be stated later). I am looking for a laptop with a decent size screen, above 13 inches, it doesnt have to be touch screen, I would actually prefer if it weren't. Also, I would almost need 8 gbs of ram to be able to have Microsoft word open as well as chrome with a bunch of tabs open. Storage really isn't an issue so anything that's reasonable. I would prefer that it would e 1tb so I have space for my quite extensive spotify library as well as all of my school paraphanalia. I would like a backlit keyboard if possible, but not a necessity. Okay, so about the OS. I am wanting to do some casual light gaming such as dota or LoL or maybe even Skyrim or CS:GO to entertain myself during study hall as well as I will be taking this on trips with me. Back to OS. I would like to be able to dual boot with Mac os so that I could use that OS as my "school" OS for possible obvious reasons. Well, the number one reason is because some of our homework is pushed out through iTunes U. To my current knowledge, there is no way to access iTunes u through windows OS unless your able to through iTunes. So, here we come to budget. My parents would be paying for this laptop for me to last me through the next four years and I still have some more discussing with my parents on budget. Let's say for now $1000 or less, I told them initially $800 but if I have to pitch in a few bucks to get the laptop that would suit me that would be fine.

I would also like to add that I would also like to have the choice of upgradeability since this laptop will have to last a while, it is not necessary however. Other things I will be doing on my laptop: excel, word, PowerPoint, Photoshop and Premier pro.

I apologize for the length of this post, but I am not familiar with laptops hardly at all and i don't really know where to start. I would greatly appreciate it if you guys would follow this topic and help me out finding the perfect laptop and I really appreciate and would like to thank all that contribute. I will continue to update things like budget. Other than that leave suggestions!

I apologize again for the lengthy post and any typos or grammatical errors, I am on mobile right now

[dadasmithywinkle]

-snip-

Why not get a used MacBook Pro and put a Windows partition onto it? 

[JoshK]

Why not get a used MacBook Pro and put a Windows partition onto it? 

This is going to sound terribly picky, but I am a huge advocate against buying used. I don't like the idea of having used hardware as well as not knowing everything its been through such as abuse etc. and possibly not having a warranty or insurance

[HellerTech]

I'm not great with techy stuff, but from my knowledge it will be very hard, if at all even possible to get a windows laptop, to run OSX on it because of the limited drivers out there. Then again it may be easily possible because Macbooks use intel processors as well. As much as I don't like to recommend them I would probably get a Macbook Pro, maybe a slightly older model so the RAM can be upgraded and has more I/O options. 

[dadasmithywinkle]

This is going to sound terribly picky, but I am a huge advocate against buying used. I don't like the idea of having used hardware as well as not knowing everything its been through such as abuse etc. and possibly not having a warranty or insurance

Refurbished 13.3-inch MacBook Air 1.4GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5 - Apple Store (U.S.)

Refurbished 13.3-inch MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Dual-core Intel i5 with Retina Display

Refurbished 13.3-inch MacBook Pro 2.5GHz Dual-core Intel i5

This? It won't play games, then again.

[HellerTech]

http://www.amazon.com/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-4-Laptop/dp/B000BNHM0C/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1424845707&sr=8-3&keywords=macbook+pro+2012 This I think would do pretty good, early 2011 which is a bit older but I THINK(not 100% sure) that is the newest model you can upgrade yourself, it comes stock with 4gb ram but can have max of 16gb(i think) which you would most likely want to do,atleast 8gb,.Also you can add/replace your hard drive if you want. Don't forget the i7 As for gaming, LoL, Dota, CS:GO shoudl all run fine, Skyrim may not be ultra good but probs still definitely playable.