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Cheap light laptop for school?

Z

zijin_cheng

Member
My sister needs a laptop with the following requirements:

at least 13"
battery life of at least 5 hours
weighs less than 4 pounds
New, my family hates refurbs or used
Everything else she doesn't care about, CPU, GPU etc etc, as long as it "runs windows 😛"

Less than $500.

I'm more into gaming laptops myself so my knowledge of these kind of laptops are limited. I know that a combo of light + battery life probably equals ultrabook, but are there any cheaper solutions out there?
 
My sister had similar requirements and we found one that she was very happy with. I'll email her and see if she can tell me what it was.
 
Looks like she spent more than I thought. She bought a Toshiba R705 and has been very happy with it. Super light and portable, nice battery life, but it's over $500. (I think it's probably out of stock anyway.)
 
Well, its very hard, but here's what I suggest.

Right now on HP's website the base sleekbook (essentially an ultrabook with an AMD chip and a small conventional hard drive) is 599. There is actually a special on them where they are 100 dollars off.
http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/hom...aptops/Laptops

However, if she purchases it from them, she will get a free xbox 360. She can sell this xbox 360 on ebay for at least $160 dollars but less than $200 dollars (the price of ordering it on newegg). If you factor in that, then you're looking at a thin and light laptop with excellent battery life for around $450 which I think is pretty hard to beat.

There are also netbooks you can consider throwing a SSD inside.
 
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I was going to suggest one of the less expensive Lenovo thinkpads (e-something line, 430? forget the number) or a dell vostro and then upgrading the ram/hdd yourself (the hardest part for me was buying the screwdriver) but both are slightly above. iirc, the lenovo i played with online came to ~$540.
 
Sunburn74 said:
Well, its very hard, but here's what I suggest.

Right now on HP's website the base sleekbook (essentially an ultrabook with an AMD chip and a small conventional hard drive) is 599. There is actually a special on them where they are 100 dollars off.
http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/hom...aptops/Laptops

However, if she purchases it from them, she will get a free xbox 360. She can sell this xbox 360 on ebay for at least $160 dollars but less than $200 dollars (the price of ordering it on newegg). If you factor in that, then you're looking at a thin and light laptop with excellent battery life for around $450 which I think is pretty hard to beat.

There are also netbooks you can consider throwing a SSD inside.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll be sure to check out the sleekbook, but we are in Canada, so her email doesn't end in edu, it ends in yorku so she can't sell the xbox 360
She needs something at least 13", netbooks are 10.1-11", so netbooks were ruled out.

themillak said:
I was going to suggest one of the less expensive Lenovo thinkpads (e-something line, 430? forget the number) or a dell vostro and then upgrading the ram/hdd yourself (the hardest part for me was buying the screwdriver) but both are slightly above. iirc, the lenovo i played with online came to ~$540.
Click to expand...

Cool i'll check those out as well

crab0 said:
http://www.amazon.com/U32U-ES21-Ultr...13+inch+laptop
Click to expand...

Thank

So guys, looks like anything around 3lbs = ultrabook = greater than $500, thanks and repped

4lbs is the limit for $500 eh?

EDIT: wait a sec where'd the rep button go
 
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