Suggestions for long battery life laptops?

[GatorBait]

I need to upgrade laptops for 3 Doctor's offices. I have seen some thoughtful suggestions from this forum & wanted to see what others opinion may be.

Our physicians use these laptops to chart patient encounters, send electronic prescriptions, and send secured encrypted HIPPA compliant messages (patient related). We use a Electronic Health Record that is web based called AdvancedMD. It requires use of Internet Explorer (and thus a Windows base OS).

I am looking for the following:

-#1 priority is long battery life. We run room to room seeing patients for 6 to 10 hours a day (30 + patients a day). We can recharge during a lunch break for @ an hour.

-#2 priority is light weight. We have mobile stands on wheels that can be used as a platform to chart, but often it is easier and more personable to just carry the laptop by hand into our exam rooms. Bulky batteries & laptops are a hassle. We live & breath with these machines, so the aesthetics are important.

-#3 priority is good typing experience. I've noticed some of the better battery life ultrabooks have lousy keyboard or track pads. Again, it may seem minor, but when a poor keyboard or track pad cause you to slow patient documentation, it gets very frustrating.

Price $ = I'm expecting to pay a premium for all 3 requirement. I estimate a cost per laptop of $1500 to $1800.

So far I have seen possibly 3 machines that might meet my needs:

HP Spectre 13t

Asus Zenbook ux302LG

13 inch MacBook Air (? Maybe the 11 inch too?)

HP Spectre 13t appears to be close to the MacBook Air quality and aesthetics & would be cheaper since I would not have to run Parallels + purchase Windows separately.

Asus Zenbook ux302LG is gorgeous but the at the limit of what I want to spend ($1800).

MacBook Air wins the battery life race, is a solid build, has the aesthetics we need but requires ruining parallels + purchasing Windows OS (or installing in Bootcamp on a partitioned HD - but find this to be annoying to switch back n forth).

I looked at the Dell XPS but keyboard & track pad bother me a bit. I am also biased against prior poor experience with Dell products. Might be unjustified but I'm willing to reconsider.

Any other thoughts? Any other models I should consider?

Thank you for your suggestions in advance. I hold your opinions in high regard!

GatorBait

[lufihengr]

Macbook air/pro

[Kayn]

Acer Aspire S7-392

[GatorBait]

Mac air is what am leaning towards. Mac Pro is more than we need, not as light, and battery life not quite as good. Both would work and be pleasing aesthetically. Parallels seems to work well for running Windows based software like our EHR. Thank you.

[GatorBait]

Acer Aspire S7-392

Good idea. Pretty laptop. I will check this model out!

[junky]

you might want to consider rigid business laptops like the Lenovo T440S / T440P

[rashdanml]

Thinkpad X230 + 9-cell battery + 6-cell slice = 20 hours claimed, 17-18 in a realistic scenario. Costs about $1500 now, since the X230 can't be configured on Lenovo directly. The extra batteries add a little bit of bulk. I own this one, and I'm adding the batteries soon. 

 

Thinkpad X240 with the battery upgrade claims 17 hours. Under $1500 for the config. The extra battery upgrade shouldn't add much weight/bulk as the slice battery is no longer available. $1350 for 1080p screen, i5 4300U CPU and 6-cell battery. 

 

If you want lightweight and outstanding battery life, the Thinkpad X series is the best option. 

[Dudenstein]

Honestly the Mac air would be the best option in terms of hardware and expectations. The only problem is the OS but you can solve that relatively easily.

[Aniallation]

Thinkpads have amazing battery life. I still have one with a Core Duo processor (original Core, not Core 2) and it gets 6 hours of tumblr on a charge. 

[macpro622776]

Go the MacBook Air. If you boot camp it, you can set it to boot into Windows by default without having to go through OS X, so it is a 'set and forget'.

[GatorBait]

Thank you all for the suggestions.

 

I will be getting some hands on experience with the above laptops over next couple of weeks.

 

I really appreciate the help!

[Probenja]

The x240, it has an integrated 3 cell, an external 3 or 6 cell and they are hot swapabble so you pretty much never run out of battery, i think it gets more than 17 hours with the 3+6 cell battery and you could buy another battery and have pretty much a full day of battery. They look pretty good and they have good keyboards, not sure about the trackpad though.

 

[Antistatic12]

My Lenovo Thinkpad X230 with battery slice gets ~20hours. It is sill quite small and compact.

I know it meets two of your requirements, but typing is very subjective. So it is hard to say. I don't mind typing on it though.