Looking for laptop recommendations? A primer.

[thedarkwolf]

7 P states although I don't really see is use any of them much other than P0 and P6, fastest and slowest.

 

[jamiev]

Thanks for all the advice. The laptop information I have read has been very helpful. My son has been mentioning the new "Ultra" books Battery Life is appealing . So is lightweight and thin structure.
Would any of these be intel Sandy bridge ?
All have the solid state drives. Would resolutions and screen quality be good for these models? They are all pricey!

Here are some of the models he has mentioned.
Toshiba Portege Z835 (1.4GHz Core i3-2367M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)

Lenovo IdeaPad U300s (1.8GHz Core i7-2677M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)

ASUS Zenbook UX31 (1.7GHz Core i5-2557M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)

Acer Aspire Ultrabook S3 (1.6GHz Core i5-2467M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)

13-inch, 2011 MacBook Air (1.7 GHz Core i5-2557M, Intel HD Graphics

Samsung Series 9 (1.7GHz Core i5-2537M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)
any comments would be appreciated
?thanks again

 

[Schadenfreude]

Thanks for all the advice. The laptop information I have read has been very helpful. My son has been mentioning the new "Ultra" books Battery Life is appealing . So is lightweight and thin structure.
Would any of these be intel Sandy bridge ?
All have the solid state drives. Would resolutions and screen quality be good for these models? They are all pricey!

Here are some of the models he has mentioned.
Toshiba Portege Z835 (1.4GHz Core i3-2367M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)

Lenovo IdeaPad U300s (1.8GHz Core i7-2677M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)

ASUS Zenbook UX31 (1.7GHz Core i5-2557M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)

Acer Aspire Ultrabook S3 (1.6GHz Core i5-2467M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)

13-inch, 2011 MacBook Air (1.7 GHz Core i5-2557M, Intel HD Graphics

Samsung Series 9 (1.7GHz Core i5-2537M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)
any comments would be appreciated
?thanks again

All the notebooks you've mentioned run on Sandy Bridge CPUs; none of those laptops have displays that are upgradeable, but out of them the UX31 come with the highest resolution display at 1600x900 and the Air at 1440x900. For their screen size the standard 1366x768 is perfectly fine, but I would recommend against them as a main machine due to the cramped keypad (which some would argue you can get used to), small/limited display, minimal ports and lack of a optical drive (which may be up for debate as well)

If it was me I'd go with the Thinkpad 420:you can upgrade the display to 1600x900, add a dGPU and a core i7 CPU. Thinkpads are built well, are known to last, and at 14" you have a good mix of portability and typing/display space - but obviously it is not an ultrabook.

Having said that, if your son/you are intent on an Ultrabook, I would go with either the Ideapad U300s, Asus UX31 or the Macbook Air in that order; The Ideapad has the best build of the Ultrabooks from what I gather, the UX31 has the high-res display, and while hardware-wise the Macbook Air has a great build quality I hesitate because of the price and the possibility that your son my have to have a Windows machine to run some of the programs for his curriculum (meaning you'd have to get Win7 on top of the laptop purchase).

 

[jamiev]

We really like the lenovo t 420, t 420s and t 520 . Here is one of the configurations we have explored with Lenovo; this one is the 520 which can be upgraded to the i7 quad core:

4239CTO THINKPAD T520 - 1 YR $1,526.04 0B06461 SBB INCOI7-2760QM2.40GHZ8MB $0.00 45M3090 VBB GENUWIN7PROFES.64 $0.00 0A68625 SBB GW7P64 E $0.00 0A68535 SBB 15.6FHD (1900 X 1080) LED $0.00 0A68531 SBB NVIDIAN12P-GVOPGR1GBDDR3M $0.00 75Y0829 VBB 6GB PC3-10600 SODIMM $0.00 45M4839 SBB KEYBOARDUS ENGLISH $0.00 0A68555 SBB INT 160GB SSD SRATA $0.00 0A68547 SBB DVD RC8XMXDLLRULTEHATA $0.00 0A68529 VBB ECS+4IN1CR $0.00 45M4815 SBB 6CELLLI-ION BATTERY $0.00 45M4636 SBB CNTPKNRHAMWTLNCR+135WACAD. $0.00 0A68261 SBB BLUETOOTH 3.0 $0.00 45M4804 SBB IN.CENT.ULTIMATE-N 6300 $0.00 44C7950 SBB INT WRLSSWDAREANTWRK UPGR $0.00





The only lenovo 420/ 520 negatives I keep reading about is the resolution and general complaints about the screen
I am trying to explore the ASUS equivalent to those models in that i keep hearing good things about that manufacturer. All of these are pricey but my son will get a student discount amounting to about 10% +-.
Which ASUS should we be looking at to compare ?
Thes lenovos are 1.2" thick.. not too bad . We may actually go for the 420 or 420 s in a effort to keep it slimmer but you can't get quad core with those two..not a big deal.
What do you guys think and which asus or other should I compare the lenovos models to? thanks