Help with finding a laptop for college.

[Jaakey]

Let me start off by apologizing if this is in the wrong section.

With that out of the way, I'm currently 17 years old and a full time student in my first year of (UK) college. I'm looking for a laptop which would have a long battery life for extended use over the day and one that will be able to run my programs (I'm focusing on my programming). I'm not very good with computer systems, especially laptops so please excuse any lack of information I put forward.

I intend to use the laptop in my timetable gaps for writing/running programs as well as just simply running MS Word for other coursework. I'm looking for a laptop that's will be able to run the programs without struggling (like the college computers) for long periods (of roughly 5+ hours). If the laptop's price could be reduced by not having an OS installed then I'd prefer this option as I have spare windows OS codes from my current PC.

I've seen other threads talk about 'amount of tabs or programs open at once' so I thought to mention that the most I'd have open is the compiler or program for programming I'm using, a MS Word document or two and a few internet tabs. (Sorry if this is irrelevant.

I don't have much of a budget for this, I personally have £200 from savings after previous large investments however if the laptop is good I'm sure I could gather up the extra money.

Sorry for such a large thread but thank you for reading and any replies or suggestions will be appreciated!

 

[PassMark]

I was going to suggest the Lenovo Yoga 2 or 3, until I got to the bit about your budget.

If you are doing programming at Uni, then they should have,
A) A computer lab you can use.
B) A power point you can use, meaning battery life might not be so critical.

 

[Jaakey]

Honestly, the battery life isn't too critical. That's the maximum possible time I'd spend using it. For some reason at my college they dislike pupils using the plugs for charging technology.

I was hoping to spend my current gaps to learn the programming languages which I'll be doing at uni. As long as the laptop can run a compiler for at least 2 hours or so unplugged it should be fine. The only things that matter too greatly is being able to run the programs and, though less important, the screen should be big enough to have two programs side by side for when I'm commenting on code or such.