Goldberry

I'm in Atlanta for undergrad now but I go through Athens quite a lot - it's somewhat bike friendly, but I'd definitely plan on getting a car. Georgia as a whole is a very car-based state, and you'd miss a lot being tied to bikeable distances and bike-friendly roads. Athens is a great town, and lots of fantastic music, great bar scene, etc, and on the scale of georgia it really isn't too far from Atlanta, which opens pretty much every resource you'd want.

Due to a peculiarity in research funding as an undergrad, I have the opportunity now to purchase a computer that I will receive in about a year for personal use (which is a little while before I plan to start a phd program in physics (theory/computational)). So: I need to choose a computer by Jan 2016 to receive in Jan 2017. Any advice on what to get? I have a sizable amount of money for this (~$1000 plus personal funds and a few other funding sources I could pull from). Things to take into account: I have a functional 3 year old macbook, will have to deal with moving to wherever I go to school if I get a desktop, I have several terabyte+-sized external hard drives lying around, I have no brand loyalty to apple in particular (but think that sometimes their design is nice), I have no familiarity with linux but also am presumable more than capable of figuring it out (and I'll have time before grad school starts).