College Laptop

I'm looking for a laptop with >5 hours of battery life (which was all I saw when looking at sager laptops). I'm not planning to really play games on this since I'll be taking my desktop, however I also probably won't be bringing my desktop back during breaks so....

 

Anyway, the new Macbook Air initially intrigued me but I felt it was a little overpriced, especially for an i5 (despite being haswell). I'm now looking at the HP Envy 15t or whatever, which I would be able to get around $800-900 with an i7-4700m and possibly a 740m, with about 9 hours of battery.

 

I know that HP isn't generally the go-to regarding quality which is why I wanted to see what others would recommend and whether this Envy is a good buy.

Why do you need the power of an i7 or even an i5? College laptops don't really need to be all that powerful.

I want to have a Haswell processor, which adds a lot, and I also just want the extra power in case anything arises. 

 

However, I have not really heard suggestions besides getting a Sager or the Macbook air, so my knowledge of lesser-priced laptops is lacking. If anyone has alternate suggestions, then please go ahead. I just thought that HP was at a good price.

 

I also keep laptops a long time (current one is 7 years). Only thing that sort of confuses me is how the new Office works, but that is a little later problem.

There isn't really any need to get anything over an i3, unless you plan on doing rendering or something. Even for gaming, an i3 will suit most people just fine. No need to spend the extra cash.

My priorities with laptops:

  • 1920x1080
  • RAM
  • OpenCL
  • hdd speed

Now, if you are editing, and AMD APU will beat the Intel processors thanks to Adobe CC and their support for OpenCL. 

If you are not editing I would still put ram and hdd speed high on the list. So, if I were buying a laptop today, here is what would be on the top of my list:

  1. MSI G Series GX70 - http://amzn.to/1aL6WYF
  2. MSI G Series GX60 - http://amzn.to/1287yD2

I couldn't find a haswell laptop in that range that will be able to keep up. You will need to spend way more to get a good GPU and such. Also, note that the AMD CPU's are barely slower than the Intel when gaming is concerned (with a dedicated graphics card) and they are usually faster when using integraded graphics. Other than that, they are still true quad cores and extremely fast for the money. Yes, the Intel is faster per-core for regular desktop stuff... but when a program supports OpenCL, the AMD will win.

Have have a a look at the MSI GE60 here in aus http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=23790&zenid=65f144c46a75bd7c5631f52d681b2654 which i am looking at get for myself for uni