A good laptop for college?

I'm starting college in a month and am wondering what's a good laptop I should get? I've read reviews and compared multiple laptops. A lot of my cousins recommend a MacBook Pro with Retina Display, but they're all kind of fanatics for Apple products.
It needs to be able to do the basics needed for a college laptop (MicroSoft Office, decent battery life, and such)

The budget my parents gave me depends on the company. If it's an Apple laptop, they said $1200-$1300 would be the max. If its Windows based they said $800 would be the max.
I'm looking for a laptop that would last me through 4, maybe 5 years of college. It would be my personal laptop for school related things.
Currently I'm debating between the Surface Pro 3, a Lenovo G580, ASUS Transformer T100, MacBook Pro with Retina Display or possibly something else that someone can recommend.
What I'd prefer is something that is lightweight, decent sized screen, good battery life and MUST have a USB port. A disk drive I don't really need. Also I have a Galaxy S3, and will probably upgrade to the OnePlus One phone once it becomes available to the public. For those that don't know, it's an Android based phone. So the laptop needs to be able to be able to transfer files from the phone and back.

Guest

I personally think that Asus is the best make of a laptop, so I would go for one of those.

Lenovo is good too

Connor

Asus and Lenovo are great PC manufacturers. Lots of college kids use Macbooks because of the lack of "I'm a computer, lemme have issues with updates and viruses and sudden failures real quick.". These can be avoided though if you spend enough money and/or do your research on what laptop you're buying. An ASUS Vivobook is a good choice for a laptop and it's made by the best PC manufacturer around.

Aura

Yoga 3 pros or whatever they're called are really nice and ergonomic, I believe. A small one is usually the best if you're just using it for school/college.

Joe

I would get the Surface. Its versatile so you can use it for more than just school and built very well so it should last for a while, plus has a very good screen. It starts at $799 but the keyboard is extra… I would try and get some more money out of the parents, this is very much an MacBook air equivalent.

Ben