laptop for engineering student, focus on battery life

[leadpaint]

Hello everybody,

I'm going to college for computer engineering next month, and I will need a laptop to bring along. Gaming isn't important, but long battery life is important for me. As far as I'm aware, I should be able to do most of my computational heavy lifting on the school workstations (at UIllinois), so processing power would be nice, but I don't particularly need a fast CPU.

The laptop will be used as a typewriter, and for RDP to access school workstations if possible.

So far, various ultrabooks have caught my eye, but I'd like to know if there are any better options. Higher battery life is better. 1366x768 is an ok resolution, but more pixels is better. A smaller laptop is preferred (<15"). My budget is $600-800, but lower is always better.

tl;dr:

Request: high battery life typewriter, beat ultrabooks
Price: <800USD
Size: <15"

Thank you!

 

[Ayah]

http://slickdeals.net/f/4933214-Len...-RAM-320GB-HDD-615-30-AC-Lenovo-Barnes-Noble?

The upgrades to the IPS panel, 9cell battery, backlit keyboard, and wireless nic would be quite nice to have and should still fall within your budget. 12.5" screen makes it extremely tiny, and should have all the compute requirements you'd want.

I'm an engineering student with it's predecessor the x220 and it performs well, and nobody can touch my 160Wh battery capacity. (9 cell primary + 6 cell slice)

 

[Knavish]

I would never use a 1366x768 for any kind of engineering work. Trying to juggle a Matlab command window, editor, and single plot in that few pixels would be pretty frustrating. I had a decent Dell laptop at one job with a low res monitor (1280x768?) that I could barely use outside of a docking station.

EDIT:
There are sub $700 refurb Dell Latitude E5420's available with 1600x900 screens.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I would never use a 1366x768 for any kind of engineering work. Trying to juggle a Matlab command window, editor, and single plot in that few pixels would be pretty frustrating. I had a decent Dell laptop at one job with a low res monitor (1280x768?) that I could barely use outside of a docking station.

EDIT:
There are sub $700 refurb Dell Latitude E5420's available with 1600x900 screens.

I have 3x 1080p screens on my desktop but I've never had a problem using my x220 to get work done. Honestly I prefer using it over other laptops with higher res screens simply due to the IPS display.

 

[kevinsbane]

I used to think higher resolution is better... and it is.

But my thinking that I could not work on a 1366x768 screen is gone now. Yes, it may not be quite as efficient or quite as fast. But you get used to it, and adapt. You're not at your best, but you never really are on a laptop anyways.

For what leadpaint is using his laptop for, 768p is of no consequence. On the other hand, the best keyboard and trackpoint (you should learn how to use it if you don't already; it makes typing a pleasure on a laptop) makes for a hugely more important points than resolution he may not need.

 

[pauldun170]

I connect my laptop up to a 24inch monitor when I need real estate.
Otherwise, big screens just shorten battery life. Made that mistake on my last laptop (17inch screen 1440 x 900 resolution).

 

[PCTC2]

The smallest resolutions I use now is 1440x900, and even then, that's edging on too small for programming and engineering, IMO. Even running things remotely, it seems small for some hard engineering work. I used to try to run Matlab over a remote X session, program using vim, and having a browser open, and it just seemed...cramped.

I preferably use my 1920x1200 17" MBP (not available, and also not in budget), but what's interesting is this:

http://store.vizio.com/ct14a0.html

No clue on build quality, longevity, or anything, but it's 14" 1600x900, SSD, and Core i3. It is a little out of your budget, but just thought it was interesting to see the cheap TV maker making ultra books.

 

[snoturtle]

Was in a similar situation as you recently
I ended up getting a XPS 13 from the Dell outlet when they had the 20% off sale going on
Should be here on Thursday 🙂

 

[leadpaint]

Thanks everyone! I decided to go for the x230 deal.

As a follow up, does anybody think that I'll need more than 4GB of RAM? I'll have one slot open, and I'm not sure if I should fill it with another 4GB now, or wait until later and potentially get more.

 

[Ayah]

I replaced the stock 4GB in my x220 with 2*8GB sticks... Was like 90$ and well worth it.

 

[fatpolomanjr]

.... http://store.vizio.com/ct14a0.html

No clue on build quality, longevity, or anything, but it's 14" 1600x900, SSD, and Core i3. It is a little out of your budget, but just thought it was interesting to see the cheap TV maker making ultra books.

Holy crap, that is awesome. I would seriously buy one of those just to say I own a Vizio Ultrabook.

OP: Glad to hear you went with the X230. You won't be disappointed with it aside from the trackpad. Use the Two Finger Scroll mod to improve the trackpad, or either use a mouse or learn to use the Trackpoint (which is really good if you learn how). I actually use the trackpad for scrolling and the trackpoint buttons for clicking, since the "clicks" on the clickpad is the only bad thing about it after using the mod.

Edit: The mod: MacHater's TwoFingerScroll mod. You will need to disable Multitouch gestures on the Synaptics driver and use the "Smart scrolling" option in the mod. I also disabled horizontally scrolling because I hate it, as well as the one finger scroll portion of my clickpad because I hate it too.