Help choosing laptop

halcyonview

New Member
Good afternoon,

I'm looking for a laptop that fills certain specifications. I'm hoping some of you folks would be so kind as to share ideas or personal experiences with laptops that fit the bill, or let me know if I'm asking for too much.

The biggest limiting factor is battery life. I spend 5-6 hours a day between classes/meetings without a power outlet when the ability to work would improve my quality of life, so I'm looking for a laptop that fits the following specs while also getting 5 or more hours of battery life.
Must multitask, ideally running college level powerpoint presentations, word documents, and a web browser at the same time.
I have had very poor experiences with XP and Vista, and very positive experiences with 7, so, 7 is a must.
Obviously, I need at least enough hardware to run 7 and fit the bill for the multitasking above.
Smaller than 15" is a bonus.

My initial hope was to spend less than 400USD. I'm realizing this is looking unrealistic? The cheapest I could find to do this was Toshiba 13.3" T235D-S1340. Will this do what I am looking to get done? Is there cheaper out there? Do I need a more expensive setup?

Thank you in advance!

Ryan
 
I think you go for Lenovo, but what is your budget? If you want a good battery life then you have to have a good budget.
 
Yes, Lenovo and also Asus. I am no Intel fanboy but you'll definitely get better battery life with their i3 and i5 processors. With what you need your system to do the i3 is fine.

Believe it or not the AMD offerings, even though they don't offer the L3 cache, would work well because, again, what you need this laptop to do and systems with an AMD chip are for the most part less expensive.

That Toshiba might not have an internal CD/DVD drive due to size. Check to see if it does.

* I doubt a $400 budget will do it for you.
 
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