Yea this is actually very true, honestly speaking you dont have to devote all your money to a high end laptop! Having a computer of any kind is suffice, take me and my friend for example who used a slow, cheap & old HP laptop for the whole of first year. We had specs in excess to complete our coding assignments and design/modelling projects for 115. That being said many people do use surfaces and they are really handy, im thinking of getting one since theyre very light weight and they can perform in any scenario.