Best Laptop for FSU

Pasbal
Sun, 15 Apr 2012 15:05:12 +0000

Honestly? No, I don’t feel like portability is really that important. But I also don’t take my laptop to class, so I’m rarely hauling it around with me. I don’t really think that the difference between my laptop (about 5.5 lbs) and any of the ultraportable laptops (2.5 to 4 lbs) is really all that big of a deal. It’s all personal preference though- some people I know swear that even a pound of weight difference in a laptop is significant.

Ultraportables are like the new netbooks (except more expensive and with better specs): they’re being marketed as a powerful enough laptop with great battery life, but they achieve that battery life by using low powered processors, that use very little power compared to the “mainstream” processors you’ll see in full-size laptops.

They could work for your daughter. I don’t know of anything that would stop an ultrabook from being sufficient in her case. I’m a very atypical college student- I’ve never had any requirements from my computer other than to go online and open Microsoft Office for my classes, but I use it for things like audio and video editing and some light gaming, and the processors in the Ultrabooks just don’t compare to their more powerful versions in full-size laptops.

Something I thought was interesting: I just looked up the Acer Ultrabook on Amazon and the 14" Acer TimelineX (the old Acer “thin and light” line before Ultrabooks). The Ultrabook is only listed at 6 hours of battery life, but the TimelineX is listed at 9 hours of battery life- and it’s got a fully powered processor (it’s also nearly $100 cheaper). I can also attest to the size of the TimelineX being very thin- almost the size of an Ultrabook.

Personally, I don’t really get the appeal of Ultrabooks, but I also understand I’m not in the target audience for one either. If your daughter though likes one of them, there’s really no reason that it wouldn’t work for her.