Solved! What laptop should i get for A-level?

[madmadmax321]

Hi im new to the forum and i was wondering what laptop i should get could you give me some suggestions?
It will be used with autocad 2011 alot and lots of film watching and listening to music and surfing the web. Also advanced editing using adobe after effects and sony vegas pro.

It needs to have 4 hours of battery life or more.

A 15inch screen

my budget is about £1200 (1950 USD) however i would like it to be a bit under that.

Thanks

 

[WR2]

Also advanced editing using adobe after effects and sony vegas pro.
It needs to have 4 hours of battery life or more.

Hello madmadmax321;
Those two things are kinda contradictory. And a laptop is a major compromise when you're talking about advanced video editing.

Within the budget you mention you're going to be much better off with a powerful desktop system.

Look for a $1400 desktop PC and a $550 notebook like:
TOSHIBA Satellite L745D 14" Notebook AMD A6-3400M APU & AMD Radeon HD 6520G

Core i7 2600K(3.40GHz) 8GB RAM 2TB w/ NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 $1200 tower and a good 23"/24" 1920x1080 LCD monitor.

 

[Abyssalx]

I Agree with WR2, that's the best option. A laptop with a claimed 4 hour battery life, means 4 hours browsing the web, email, doing basically nothing. Video and 3d editing, music editing will kill the battery, like a max of 1:30 on a 4 hour battery.

 

[madmadmax321]

Sorry when i said 4 hours battery life i meant when just watching videos and browsing the web. however it needs to be a laptop as i am traveling alot between school and home and other class rooms. i sure the hp envy 14 but heard it had a terrible battery life so something with them similar specs would be nice just with a better battery life

 

[jamie_1318]

I'm going to second that. you really should build a separate machine for number crunching, and a laptop for on the go. Unless you have a specific reason for working on the go, it is really reasonable to get both a laptop for away time, and a powerful desktop. you will find that the desktop will be much more powerful than a laptop (around two times as fast) for the same price. I second WR2s picks as well, they are both pretty decent machines.

 

[WR2]

Getting something with good battery life means sacrificing a lot of performance for running advanced video editing capability.

 

[WR2]

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420s Review 6+hrs battey life, Core i5-2410 CPU. 1366x768 LCD screen.
Battery life tested with continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 40-percent LCD brightness.

Dell Latitude E6420 Review configure as you require.
With optional 9-cell (97WH) battery you can get 9hrs battery life. Core i5 or i7 CPU.
1600x900 res LCD screen as an option. Nice feature in a portable 14" notebook.

 

[madmadmax321]

My only concern with the lenovo is that i will be doing alot of auto cad work for my A-levels. Do you think the cpu could handle the program and also a few other ones in the background

 

[WR2]

It can definitely handle AutoCad & multi-tasking very easily. There are NO limitations on getting work done. The difference will be in the amount of time the work takes to get finished during CPU heavy runs.
Same for any video editing software you want to use, it will run them very easily.
It's just not going to be as fast as a top flight desktop CPU could do that same amount of work.