1420 or 1520

I'm getting ready to buy either a 1420 or a 1520 with about the same specs. I'm still a little hesitant to pull the trigger on either one.

I wanted to hear from the chorus about the durability of both, whether screen size will really matter for an engineering student, portability for someone who will only carry it around occasionally, etc.

 

i just submitted a review for the 1420, it should be up sometime soon.

1420 in my opinion if your going to carry it around occasionally. really the two things the 1520 has on the 1420 is the graphics card and the screen size. 14.1 inch widescreen is NOT bad at all (my last laptop was 15.4inchwide)

 

Having just graduate with my mechanical engineering degree, this is what I have to say about laptops and engineering.

1) High resolution is great for engineering, especially when you have large spreadsheets open and are programming. I loved having 1680 x 1050 in that respect. Extra real estate will come really handy in engineering. My resolution is one of my favorite things about my laptop.

2) 15.4" notebook is a lot to carry around, it gets a lot heavier than one would imagine.

With that said, If you don't want the 1680 x 1050 res, I would go with the 14" notebook for portability purposes. I believe you can outfit that one with a 1440 x 900 screen, which is still better than the standard 1280 x 800. Of course, I would go to the store and check out some resolutions to see what looks best and works best for you. Hope that helps a bit.


By the way, this is assuming you are not going to be gaming. If you are, get the 1520 with the 8600 series card, it will give you much better gaming performance.