What laptop should I get?

[homi1ife]

I am going to be a junior in college soon and I need a new laptop. I am currently majoring in engineering and I was wondering what laptop do you guys think I would need. I currently have a Fujitsu laptop and it's not working well at all. I am looking for a decent laptop that would have no problem running any engineering program on it, like I don't want it to lag or anything. I am hoping this laptop would cost no more than $1500 and be able to last the remainder of my college career.

I am probability going to be carrying the laptop in and out of my dorm when I go study but I don't really live far away. I am going to be watching movies on it and I want a great battery life to support it as well as the graphic.

thanks for the suggestions

[Iamjosh]

I would look at two brands; Asus and Lenovo.Some of the fellows also prefer Dell but I am not much of a Dell person.

You did not mention if you prefer smaller size (13") or something like 15" or even 17". If you plan to carry it around then I'd stick to something no larger than 15". Even some 15" can weigh 6+ lbs. Since you are concerned about the reserve battery time, I'd would look at laptops with i3 cpu and a good quality video card. Anything with i7 will not provide you with too much reserve time as those cpu's are power hungry and the most you'll get is 2.5 hrs on a 6 cell battery pack.
A lot of people seem to be jumping on the 13" Macbook bandwagon, but personally you will be paying a premium for something that is already outdated.

[glc]

A discrete video card isn't necessary unless you will be gaming - the Intel chipset video is sufficient for everything else. However, it looks like most of the laptops out there with i series processors are going to discrete Nvidia or ATI chips.

[homi1ife]

i dont really mind the since my laptop now is around 15 inch. do you guys have any specific model you would recommend?

[Iamjosh]

Asus >>> http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=CyyiEd0t9iKZ6Afg

Lenovo >>> http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/c...20at%20Price_1

Take a look at > Lenovo IdeaPad Y560 - 064636U - Black

Good luck in your engineering studies.

[homi1ife]

thanks. I dont have anything against ASUS but alot of my friends has one and it breaks really really fast. The Lenovo is looking really nice. I was wondering about the cooling of the system. Does it heat up very fast?