Need laptop advice

[duzzy]

Hi,

 

I'm looking for a laptop that will suit my needs. I've been looking around (here and there) for a while, but I don't keep up on hardware as much as I'm sure many people here do. I'm hoping for some help.

 

What I want:

-Something lightweight and thin, but durable. I travel for work and other reasons, so this is very important to me.

-I'm a student, so I need to be able to do schoolwork on it. Most schoolwork doesn't require much, but I need the ability to run VMs on Virtualbox (probably no more than one at a time), and use GNS3.

-Battery life is important to me (again, travel).

-Screen size between 13-15". I don't want a 17" monster, but something bigger than a tablet would be good.

 

What I don't want:

-An optical drive, or anything else that adds unnecessary bulk that people these days don't use. Seriously, I don't remember the last time I used a CD/DVD for anything.

-A gaming laptop. This machine isn't intended to be for gaming. It's for work, school, studying, research, and video chats/conferences.

 

What would be preferable:

-SSD

-numberpad on the keyboard.

-something that runs fairly cool.

 

What doesn't matter:

-The operating system, bloatware, or ridiculous certificates that comes with it. I'm probably going to use OpenSUSE as my primary OS, but I'm leaving my options open for things like Debian or CentOS (In other words, whatever comes with it will be wiped).

 

Price range:

-I dunno. I certainly don't want to spend $2000. In fact, I don't really want to spend over $1000, but I guess it just depends. I'd like to find something in the area of about $700-800 (USD - I'm American) or so, if that's possible. I'd like to not spend more than I need to spend. I'm still a student paying for tuition out of pocket. That's not cheap.

 

Any ideas?

[Unhelpful]

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-i7559-763BLK-Full-HD-GeForce/dp/B015PYYDMQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448657298&sr=8-1&keywords=dell+i7559-763blk

 

Follow your topics @duzzy

 

I don't want gaming either, but I couldn't find a similar laptop without a GPU for less.

[duzzy]

If I had seen that without it being recommended, I probably wouldn't have even looked at it very much because it calls itself a gaming laptop. But, that thing seems to be pretty much perfect. For the sake of being thorough I'll probably look around a bit more, but I think I really want that machine. Thank you, @JoeyDM

[Philosobyte]

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-i7559-763BLK-Full-HD-GeForce/dp/B015PYYDMQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448657298&sr=8-1&keywords=dell+i7559-763blk

 

Follow your topics @duzzy

 

I don't want gaming either, but I couldn't find a similar laptop without a GPU for less.

     In my opinion, a 15.6" notebook is too large. 25mm in thickness is borderline too thick for a school notebook, although 25mm is actually good for a 15.6" screen size. This laptop's biggest issue is the massive weight of 5.7 pounds. It would be tedious to lug this around every day. 

 

     The Dell XPS 13 is excellent, and its build quality, according to Notebookcheck (case/build quality section: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-13-9350-InfinityEdge-Ultrabook-Review.153376.0.html ) is comparable to that of business notebooks, so durability is good. It's portable, the base model's performance is more than sufficient for most schoolwork and things like programming and audio editing. I've never done anything with virtual machines or GNS3, though, so I don't know how the XPS 13's processors would fare with them. But if you know of processors which can handle those applications, you can compare those processors on websites like Notebookcheck or cpubenchmark.net.

     The only thing it doesn't have is a numpad, but you're not going to get a numpad on any computer smaller than 15.6". So if you absolutely need a numpad, you'd be hard-pressed to find anything significantly better than JoeyDM's suggestion except at a higher price.