Wife's Going to Grad School...another which one thread :)

My wife starts grad school next week and she's looking for a laptop to use as her school laptop for the next couple years. I haven't bought a new laptop in a few years and the market has gotten a little weird so I am looking for advice.

She does not get excited about technology at all, this will truly be a web, office, email machine. The things I think she will notice will be quality keyboard/palm deflection, not a horrendous screen, battery life, portability, and for performance as long as it doesn't fall down on youtube HD it will probably be enough. Looking at max $500 she'd be much happier spending less. I think a 13" 14" would be ideal, I have a 15.4" 7lbs work laptop and I hate it.

My problem is the convertable/chromebook market has really saturated the smaller laptop market. I know she could care less if it has touch screen and wouldn't pay for it. I think a Baytrail would probably be enough horsepower but it's hard for me to get over the "I'm buying a Celeron?" feel in my gut. Any suggestions?

I am looing at a Lenovo Z40 with i3-4030U, GeForce GT820M, 14" FHD for $500. It's far more power than she needs and I'd prefer intel HD over the Gefore for better battery, but that's a slamming deal that ends today. But I also feel I just spec'd out a laptop for myself more than for her....so can anyone come up with another suggestion?

if the most demanding thing she is doing is watching youtube vids then the Lenovo is not bad at all

If you have access to the Classifieds here there's a nice Lenovo in there for $500.

I was in the market for a new tablet/netbook/laptop. I already have a dual core Dell with middle of the road performance. The problem is even with an extended battery pack, it only gets about 2 hours of use. I own a LG G Flex phone, so portability is covered, but it doesn't address the need for Office or being able to type papers with any sort of productivity. I used to have a 10" netbook, but they keyboard was also entirely too small for productivity.

Obviously I had a little money to burn because, I don't really NEED something in between, but after looking at a lot of options of Android based Samsung Tablets, convertible laptops, netbooks, and Windows 8.1 tablets. I settled on the Yoga 2. It has a decent quad core Atom processor at 1.33GHz and a 32GB SD with a external SD Card slot. Although I use Windows 7 on my main machine and my laptop, and Android on my phone, I find that Windows 8.1 on the tablet is not that bad. The keyboard is very usable and windows does a good job of moving windows around so that your not blocking what you do with the on-screen keyboard.

The verdict is out, but you might want to look at the offerings of Windows based Tablets. They are very affordable and if you can get a good open box deal or sale, it makes a light, long lasting college alternative. They tuck very nicely into a backpack or briefcase and IF it gets stolen, your not out a 500+ laptop.

If you can afford it, the Surface Pro 3 is excellent for school. Apart from the extremely useful OneNote/Stylus writing package, it is no slouch when it comes to running demanding programs. I use Mathematica, Lightroom, VS and plan on installing LabView. I have the i5/256Gb config. The screen is also amazing.