Need Ultrabook/Light laptop for school

angaddev

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Jan 10, 2012
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18,580
Hi,
I want to buy a laptop for school use. I'd like a decent 13' or 15' screen with a resolution of 1600x900 or higher. Storage is not important (128GB will suffice). The most demanding applications I will be running are Team Fortress 2 and Lightroom. The battery should last at least six hours. My budget is around £700.

Thank you!
 

IInuyasha74

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The big problem is that you won't find a lot of systems that come with six hour battery life. The best I have ever seen for a laptop is 5 hours. I think some lower end laptops have longer battery life, but you won't get them to play much or havea good screen.

How much is £700 in USD and I will try to find you a laptop that is decent for what you are wanting. A screen that size is easy, and the storage space won't be any concern since its hard to find a laptop that comes with as small of storage space as that. The things to worry about will be the battery life, GPU, and screen resolution.

Chances are you will need to buy a larger extended battery for the system after getting it to come close to your desired battery life. If you play games though on it, it won't have half that battery life unless you find a battery as big as the system itself.

I don't think graphics will be hard for you either, its more screen resolution. You can get decent systems with decent graphics cheap enough, but to find them with higher resolution displays is difficult without paying quite a bit for them.
 

angaddev

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Jan 10, 2012
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18,580
Converting £700 to USD would be irrelevant as things are cheaper in the US... Maybe not six hours battery life, at least four. Integrated HD4000 graphics can play TF2, and I would prefer haswell. Also, my budget has increased to £800
 

IInuyasha74

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It still gives us a base number to go off of. Without knowing its impossible to recommend any system with any accuracy. At least with a converted number we can get in the general area.

I don't rightly know how intensive TF2 is, but my first instinct would be if possible to get a GPU. Even if you don't need it now, better to have it encase you want to play something more demanding later, but that is helpful to know. So if its between a laptop with a higher resolution screen or a GPU, go with the higher resolution screen.

Haswell is a better idea, the power usage is cut down a fair bit on them.