<p>The school I want to go to requires a laptop for each student and frankly I need one anyway. My current one has been abused so much that it's garbage (I can be a klutz). I need something sturdy that will last me a while. I don't know much about computers except that I want a Windows PC. My mom's hoping to wait until Black Friday to buy so for now I'm just looking at models pretty much. No Dell. No Asus. My mom refuses to buy an Asus after dealing with their customer service trying to get my sister's laptop fixed.</p>
<p>I have owned or had regular/heavy usage access to laptops of all sorts of brands (many years of using Toshiba, Acer, Asus, HP/Compaq, Dell, built my own desktop PCs etc) and the best experiences I’ve had so far have been with HP/Compaq. Right now I am looking at the HP Envy 4-1030us Ultrabook or the HP Envy 6-1010us Sleekbook. The appeal of the ultrabook is that it has some nifty features that could be useful in a multi-class filled day on campus. It has the ability to start up within seconds and I’m not one who enjoys sitting around waiting for my laptop to shutdown/hibernate and only to spend more time waiting for it to wake up at my next class.</p>
<p>The Sleekbook doesn’t have this feature and it is about half a pound heavier than the Ultrabook, but it has up to 9.5hr battery life compared to the Ultrabook’s 6hrs. For the average student, either machine would suffice. Both are more than capable at running resource hungry programs (I often have a mix and mesh of Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign & Audacity/Premier/Soundbooth, etc running on my current laptop, which is a 4 year old Compaq CQ61 with a dual core 2.2gb processor and 4gb of ram installed). I have had virtually no hassle with this machine until recently, the cables in the hinge of the screen/lid have begun to loosen, causing flickering, hence my looking into new laptops! The average life of a laptop is around 3 years, so I’m more than happy with the performance I’ve gotten from my current machine.</p>
<p>The HP Envy 6-1010us Sleekbook is currently running at around $530, and the HP Envy 4-1030us Ultrabook is hovering around the $730 mark. Both are decent prices for what you are getting, though if you are accident prone, I would suggest a REALLY sturdy carrying case and some form of accidental damage product replacement insurance. Some people will tell you that you can claim these things on your home-owners/renters insurance, but really, I would rather shell out for specific insurance if I felt it were necessary.</p>