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elpacco · Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2013 12:56 pm Post subject: New laptop for college

So I'm going off to college in the fall as an Electrical Engineering major and I need to get a laptop. I was looking at Samsung's ultrabooks because my top priority is battery life because I would just hate to have to plug it in every like four hours or so.

My budget is around $1600 perhaps a little more. The problem is that the maximum storage capacity of Samsung's ultrabooks is 256GB, which really isn't as much as I'd like it to be. So my plan was to just replace the mSATA SSD with a larger capacity. So I was looking at this ultrabook and replacing the SSD with this one. My desktop currently has only a 80GB SSD with a 512GB hard drive anyway, so 512 on my laptop should be fine anyway. And in addition I was thinking of getting an external to leave in my dorm anyway.

I'll mostly be using this laptop for schoolwork (should be lots of various software I'll need to run) and perhaps a couple of light games. I was wondering if anybody had any suggestions on a better laptop to get or experience changing out the SSD in ultrabooks because I know they're really tightly put together. It'd be greatly appreciated.

Madman · Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2013 8:44 pm Post subject:

Sounds like you'll have CAD work, so definitely something powerful in the graphics department, and a decent amount of RAM will be good. (8GB and above)

Honestly, I don't think that type of work is really suitable for a laptop. The screen is typically less than 19", and not many have the professional graphics chips in them for that particular work, like quadros, firepro, etc. You do have a large budget, but I think that would be better suited for a dedicated CAD rig.

I looked on a couple sites, but there just weren't many options for that type of thing. I have however heard a lot of good things about Lenovo's ThinkPad line, especially in terms of usage in a professional environment. Check them out and see if anything catches your eye.

Edit: You do NOT want integrated graphics like in your first link. I went ahead and looked through the Lenovo site a little, and came up with this one. http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/w-series/w530/?sb=:00000025:00003383:

elpacco · Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 1:09 am Post subject:

I think that most of the work that will be that resource intensive we will most likely be recommended to use computers in the lab. I mostly just want something ultra-portable that is fairly powerful that I can carry around with me all day without having to plug it in or it dying.

And it was to my understanding that the current generation of Intel GMAs are surprisingly adequate. Probably not CAD-worthy, but again I don't suspect I'll be using my laptop for that specifically. I'm mostly going in with a focus on Computer Engineering and Comp Sci and not too much stuff that will be very graphics heavy I don't think.

Trow · Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2013 10:45 pm Post subject:

RE: SSD, Samsung ultrabooks use the standard 2.5" SATA interfaces, and are very easy to swap out. If you want to upgrade those hard drives, be sure to get 7mm drives

elpacco · Posted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 9:11 am Post subject:

Saifallofjmr · Posted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 2:55 pm Post subject:

If you get a laptop with a AMD cpu you can downclock and undervolt the cpu within the laptop.

elpacco · Posted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 3:32 pm Post subject:

Saifallofjmr · Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2013 11:58 pm Post subject:

elpacco · Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2013 12:21 pm Post subject:

SFP+ · Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 2:14 am Post subject:

Buy a stronger battery after you get the computer (or add it if it's optional). It'll be bigger and probably stick out but if it's battery life you're after then it's a no-brainer

Saifallofjmr · Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 10:06 am Post subject:

elpacco · Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2013 2:03 pm Post subject: