Looking for school laptop

N

nertil1

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 11, 2003
Messages
371
Hey guys

So I'm looking for a lightweight laptop for college I can move around easily and has some decent power to it. Mainly just microsoft office use and use it to take notes in class. I'd love to find something like this less than $1k and if it can be a tablet hybrid that would be even better. Need at least 5 hr battery life and screen no smaller than 13"

Hopefully you guys have some suggestions
Thanks in advance
 
On the note front- I know it's not a laptop, but have you ever looked at livescribe? We would have once a month block exams and I could review an entire months worth of lecture/notes in about two hours per class... it was money incredibly well spent.

Regarding laptop- Have you looked at a Surface Pro? You can buy a 128MB refurb for $500. Killer deal.
 
marshac said:
On the note front- I know it's not a laptop, but have you ever looked at livescribe? We would have once a month block exams and I could review an entire months worth of lecture/notes in about two hours per class... it was money incredibly well spent.

Regarding laptop- Have you looked at a Surface Pro? You can buy a 128MB refurb for $500. Killer deal.
Click to expand...

Well I'm actually looking for a laptop. I'd like to use it to watch videos, etc. I have checkout out the pro but not a fan of that keyboard, I would have to get the touch cover. Do you have a link to this deal?
 
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Have you tried playing around with something like the Surface Pro to take notes? Many people praise these types of devices for note taking with One Note as opposed to using a keyboard or peripheral drawing tablet.

Is there a specific reason you would need the touch cover?

Regarding the Surface Pro I believe the MS Store will give a 10% discount on their list prices if you are a student.

Do you require a GPU at all?

More specific for decent power?

Display quality and resolution?

The majority of convertible tablet devices are smaller than 13 inches. The Acer R7 is 15 inch "convertible" (not exactly a tablet though). Sony has has the Flip 14 and Flip 15 convertibles (15 is probably too high priced with your criteria though). Otherwise the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro is a 13 inch convertible.

Something to consider would be to pair something like the Venue 8 Pro or Vivotab 8 with a larger laptop.

When you say lightweight, these days people consider 15 inch (and even 14 inch) laptops as "heavy" now. While 13 and smaller are considered more in the light category.
 
The sony flip 15 fits your criteria and has models sub $1000, but it's 5 lbs. dunno if that's lightweight enough for you. Sony also has 10pct student discounts. The pen is $40 extra. If you read about how the pen sucks, make sure to have context. There have been lots of improvements over the last few months. I've been looking at these for school also. If you consider these, read up on the fan and win8 to 8.1 upgrade and bios problems. It' seems like it's all fixable and not a disaster but it takes some effort.

The 15 also has user upgradeable ram/hdd/wifi. supposedly you can still call sony to customize but since they're releasing refresh models with win8.1 and all the issues fixed, the web customization is disabled.

Here's a video review along with note taking and art demo (they review the i7 with discrete graphics, which meets your battery reqs. I imagine the sub $1000 i5 version gets even better battery life. They also claim they got another ~30 min over the stock hybrid drive with a samsung ssd they tried.
http://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/Sony-Vaio-Flip-15.htm
 
limitedaccess said:
Have you tried playing around with something like the Surface Pro to take notes? Many people praise these types of devices for note taking with One Note as opposed to using a keyboard or peripheral drawing tablet.

Is there a specific reason you would need the touch cover?

Regarding the Surface Pro I believe the MS Store will give a 10% discount on their list prices if you are a student.

Do you require a GPU at all?

More specific for decent power?

Display quality and resolution?

The majority of convertible tablet devices are smaller than 13 inches. The Acer R7 is 15 inch "convertible" (not exactly a tablet though). Sony has has the Flip 14 and Flip 15 convertibles (15 is probably too high priced with your criteria though). Otherwise the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro is a 13 inch convertible.

Something to consider would be to pair something like the Venue 8 Pro or Vivotab 8 with a larger laptop.

When you say lightweight, these days people consider 15 inch (and even 14 inch) laptops as "heavy" now. While 13 and smaller are considered more in the light category.
Click to expand...

I actually would like the type cover because I'd like to use it as a normal laptop too, writing papers, powerpoint, etc. GPU is not required at all, don't plan on playing any games. The display on the surface pro seems perfect for what I need and getting more interested in this. I've heard the type cover 2 is better than the original is this true?
 
I just got an ASUS Q501LA and it's great. The 1080P screen is awesome for doing juts about everything, I can finally have 2 windows open at the same time! It only cost me $480 refurbished, but that was on a slickdeal. I think you can regularly get it refurbished for $520 though.

Whatever you do, don't get a laptop with a 1336x768 screen, you'll hate it.
 
hajalie24 said:
I just got an ASUS Q501LA and it's great. The 1080P screen is awesome for doing juts about everything, I can finally have 2 windows open at the same time! It only cost me $480 refurbished, but that was on a slickdeal. I think you can regularly get it refurbished for $520 though.

Whatever you do, don't get a laptop with a 1336x768 screen, you'll hate it.
Click to expand...

1366x768 isn't that bad. If you need more real estate - even the cheapest laptops have 1-2 video outputs these days so external monitors are always an option.
 
I'm torn now between the yoga 13 and the surface pro. Leaning towards the surface pro due to the price mainly and the pen it comes with. My only concern is the battery life and I would've preferred to get win 7 on it but it seems like I'm stuck with win 8.
 
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I really don't understand why anyone wants a convertible with touch and digitizer and then complains about win8.1. I haven't used 8.1 extensively and other than the touch related UI stuff being somewhat annoying before 8.1 it's just another OS. Do people have terrible compatibility problems or something?
 
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