Difficulty choosing between 2 laptops.

[DreadfulOne]

I've been laptop shopping for school and for my price range I've narrowed it down to 2 laptops.

Lenovo laptop with tax comes to $750

and

HP Laptop with tax comes to $850

Lenovo:
1920x1080 resolution
500GB HDD + 8GB SSHD
1 year base warranty
4.2 lbs

HP:
180GB SSD
3 year base warranty
1366x768 resolution
3.48 lbs

There are other differences, but IMO are minor, such as a slightly faster CPU in the HP and 2 extra GB of RAM in the Lenovo. The touchscreen on the Lenovo Flex is really more of a novelty for me so I don't care about that, although a neat feature. What sells me on the Lenovo is the 1920x1080 screen, otherwise, I'd have gone with the HP in a heartbeat.

I'm a student in Computer science, so I'm going to be writing code and I know for a fact with higher resolution, you get more workspace and everything looks sharper. Plus for $80 more I can swap out the HDD with a 128GB SSD for faster operation, so it would come to $830 in total.

However, the reason I'm having a hard time to choose is the fact that the HP has more SSD storage and 2 years extra on the warranty. The problem with the HP of course is that you can't upgrade the screen.

What do you think guys? Would you pick higher resolution over more SSD storage and extended warranty? I'm not going to be gaming or anything, it's strictly meant for work. Also, I'm going to install Ubuntu as a second OS on the drive.

 

[jaguarskx]

I would get the Lenovo because of the 1080p screen. You can upgrade the warranty to 3 years for $109.

You can always upgrade the HDD to a SSD at a later time as long as you are not opposed to taking the laptop apart. It requires removing the back of the laptop and also the keyboard since there are 3 screws underneath the keyboard.

http/superuser.com/questions/830760/switching-hard-drive-in-lenovo-flex-2-14

 

[DreadfulOne]

Thanks for the replies guys, I went for the 1080p laptop simply because it offers more room to work with. If the HP ultrabook was 1920x1080, I would have went with that in an instant. They should start standardizing the laptops to at least a resolution of 1600x900, especially the premium models. IMO 1366x768 just doesn't cut it anymore if you primarily use the laptop for work/gaming.