Purchase a Laptop for Science at UoM, yay or nay?

[Greatness]

That battery life on that HP dm1 is pretty good, when i first tested it it lasted for 7~ hours - this is with low battery properties. If you're not using the net turn off the wifi, bluetooth etc
You would want to make sure the unnecessary background programs are turned off from startup so the only things that are running are word, adobe, chrome etc.
If you're at uni browsing the net and doing work w/o a charger the battery will still last a solid 3 1/2 - 4 hours, provided it's on battery saving option.
At melbourne there are heaps of power points esp. if you're in the library or commerce buildings.
I normally only bring my laptop if i have a break during the day or plan to stay back after my classes are done. I don't use it for lectures, i stick with the lecture slides printed out and annotating them.

Check centrecom: http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/default.php they normally have a wide range of laptops. I actually bought this beast - Asus N53S: 750gb HDD, 8gb ram, i7 (2nd gen), 1gb nvidia graphics, 17inch for $999 after christmas! It's bloody amazing, i intended to use this for uni... LOL. I took it to uni most days for like 3-4 weeks and just gave up. It was too heavy and i didn't want to risk breaking the hard drive or anything by lugging it around everyday.

[Cuddlekins]

Does anyone recommend the asus ultrabook series for uni? Or have had any experience with the brand? Thanks

[Russ]

I use one and I can recommend it. They're pricey but what you get is pretty top quality. Avoid the i7 version because you don't need it. The 13inch screen is really what you want, I find 11 inch screens are a bit cramped, especially at that resolution.

The SSD makes everything work extremely quickly, I use OneNote for my classes and it's completely lag free etc. even with importing pdf notes and screen clippings

[paulsterio]

Does anyone recommend the asus ultrabook series for uni? Or have had any experience with the brand? Thanks

I don't have one personally, but just from being a tech-head and from knowing friends who have that computer, I reckon they are quite solid. They're probably pricey for what they're worth, basically because you're paying for the design and thinness really, but specs are decent. The Intel ULV CPUs which they have are probably not as strong as a full blown laptop CPU, but they should be sufficient for your needs nonetheless.

For example, my i5 is around as powerful as the i7 ULV chip. As Russ (or whatever he's known as these days) have said, you won't need the i7, as the i5 should be enough for your needs and the premium isn't worth it, especially because the ULV i7 is still a dual-core, not a quad-core.

[VivaTequila]

I got the Samsung NC110. I'll update this and let you know if I find it useful. ATM it's proving very easy to set up and I'm getting all the files and stuff that I'll want on there now.