Laptop suggestions?

[krismax24]

Hello Community!
I recently scored well on a standardized test, and now dad will buy me a laptop
I'm currently in 10th grade high school, and might end up going to a boarding school where laptops are strongly encouraged.
I tried to choose my own laptop, but there are just too many brands and models (Asus alone has 50+ "series" ) to choose from, and with no heavy computer background, I would like some counseling.

Characteristics I would like in a laptop:
1) reliability/ruggedness-- I'm hoping to get 5-7 years out of it
2) long battery life under light usage: 5<
3) under $1200
4) processing power greater than or equal to 2.3GHz -- I want to learn to make music on a computer.. so something with lots of processing power?
4.5) core better than or equ to i5
5) screen size between 11- 15.6 inches,
6) weight under near 5lb mark. will accept to 6 lbs
7) hard drive greater than or equ to 500 gb
8) RAM greater than or equ to 4gb
9) 1280x800 or better

Preferred characteristics:
1) 7200 rpm hard drive
2) screen size 13 inch
3) optical drive

My initial choice was the Macbook Pro 13 inch i5 processor.. but now i'm not so sure because some PCs (eg M11x by alienware), offer bigger bang for price.

I tend to shy away from Dell and HP because of rumors of unreliability, but is more than willing to be proven wrong

I don't want a PC vs mac debate (although in this community it doesn't appear to be a problem) because laptops are mere tools.. no use seeing red over them right?

chipsets and graphics card discussions are confuzzling

Thanks a bunch for your ideas!
-daniel

 

[WR2]

Hello krismax24;

How soon will you be buying your new notebook? Some major changes taking place later this spring. New CPUs (Ivy Bridge) and new GPU from AMD & Nvidia too.

What, if any, type of gaming do you see yourself doing? More than anything else this drives the final cost and choice of graphics card.

For overall ruggedness and reliability the business class notebooks have an edge over the consumer class notebooks. Dell Latitudes, HP Elitebooks, Lenovo Thinkpads, Toshiba Portege, etc. They also tend to have anti-glare LCDs which can be handy in classrooms/lecture halls and outdoors.

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

If you are going to be using specialised music software you may have MAJOR problems with a Macbook.....check the sofware WILL or WILL NOT run on a Mac first...

All the best Brett

 

[krismax24]

Hello krismax24;

How soon will you be buying your new notebook? Some major changes taking place later this spring. New CPUs (Ivy Bridge) and new GPU from AMD & Nvidia too.

What, if any, type of gaming do you see yourself doing? More than anything else this drives the final cost and choice of graphics card.

For overall ruggedness and reliability the business class notebooks have an edge over the consumer class notebooks. Dell Latitudes, HP Elitebooks, Lenovo Thinkpads, Toshiba Portege, etc. They also tend to have anti-glare LCDs which can be handy in classrooms/lecture halls and outdoors.

I have no real pressure to buy sooner or later. Would it be wise to defer decisions until after the new CPUs and GPUs are released? After they are released, how long will it take before the first laptops incorporating the updates are sent into production?

I don't think game handling ability will be a big issue, because it will be fairly rare, but something along the lines of Starcraft (1) or Dota

 

[WR2]

I think by the end of April we'll have a good idea what the performance is really like and what the deployment schedule is going to be.

I'd expect to see some early mobile IBs showing up in April, enough to let you decide if you want to wait a bit to get one or look for some Sandy Bridge options that might be getting slight price breaks.