$1500 Ultrabook Suggestions?

[ddan49]

Hello,

My friend is going off to college and is looking at various ultrabooks. The thing is that not many ultrabooks have the 3rd gen IB chips. I'm only experienced in desktop components, so this is kind of a new area for me.

1. What is your budget?
Up to $1500

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
Small and portable. I'd say 15.6" is the highest.

3. What screen resolution do you want?
Doesn't matter much.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Portable

5. How much battery life do you need?
Preferably above 4 hours, 8 would be best

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
No games

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
Matlab. This laptop needs to have 6+ GB of RAM as well. Nothing too intensive. Although most programs have a minimum sys requirements of 1.8GHz for the CPU.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
256GB would be best (SSD). Possibly settle for a 128GB SSD. External HDD can be used later on for large files.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
Nope

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
4-5 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
Regular DVD ROM, although Bluray is a bonus.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
No brand difference. Lenovo is iffy 'cause of their bloatware, but that shouldn't interfere with any decisions.

13. What country do you live in?
USA

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
Matlab will be used. Also, an i7 would be nice (some programs may come up that use Hyper Threading) although not necessary. Preferably above 1.8 GHz (or at 1.8). Windows, no Macbooks. Preferably an SSD. Preferably 6+ GB of RAM or 4GB with room for upgrades. A nice look is preferred but not required. Needs to be very portable.

Thanks!

 

[slhpss]

ultrabooks don't have optical drives (though you could use an external USB drive) I personally have been looking at the vizio ultra books... I think they look very nice and have good setups available. The I7 with 256gb ssd is 1250 it only comes with 4gb ram installed but can be upgraded to 8 and has about 6 hours of battery life.

http/store.vizio.com/ct14a2.html

they are out of stock on their site but it's available from wally world

http/www.walmart.com/ip/VIZIO-Silver-15.6-Thin-Light-CT15-A2-Laptop-PC-with-Intel-Core-i7-3517U-Processor-and-Windows-7-Home-Premium-with-Windows-8-Pro-Upgrade-Option/20953951

 

[ddan49]

That looks nice (although it's even out of stock at Walmart). Any other competition out there? How soon are IB ultrabooks going to get released? (as in more IB ultrabooks)

 

[jonnyboy0123]

You can order ivy bridge ultrabooks on a few websites right now (Amazon.com for ex). They are starting to trickle into the market during the summer and will probably be in every store around the release of Windows 8 or even before then.

I've been hearing rumors about the up and coming ultrabooks and some of them look nice. Toshiba, Acer, Asus, Hp and a few others are fixing issues that are currently hurting some ultrabooks (bad keyboards, trackpads, etc...). So if you can wait for the newest ultrabooks I would.

The ASUS Zenbook prime UX32VD is a really good computer updated with the Ivy Bridge processors. However, you would have to open it up and replace the HDD with an SSD and the ram is also replaceable up to 10GB.

http/www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00863L2MS/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

 

[ddan49]

When would the "newest ultrabooks" be available? Keep in mind he has to have it in his hands at least two weeks before the start of college.

 

[nhasian]

I also recommend the vizio ones. They start shipping in a few days. The same day as my Samsung Galaxy S3 as a matter of fact