What is a good laptop for ece engineering student?

What is the best laptop for an engineering student?

• I'll be going off to college next year, and I plan to major in Chemical Engineering at a top engineering school. (Think UC Berkeley, Cornell, etc.) What would be the best laptop for me? Please list a few choices. I prefer to avoid Macs and would like to stick to PCs. Thanks for answering my question! Best answer will receive 10 pts!

• Answer:

  you will need to install bunch of things for your courses. i find important high display resolution, real video card with own memory, lightweight (14-15") and if possible reasonable battery life. battery life can be extended (and weight lowered) by removing rarely used hardware. for example i don't think i've used DVD drive in ages, i would prefer to have this as external device, only used when installing software. you can get that easily today (high resolution is usually problem unless you order, 99% in store models are 1366x768 or worse). oh and you will need wireless network (standard today) but if you have choice (say you are configuring Dell PC etc), try Intel rather than Dells own models.