Notebook for University

[User Retired 2]

Are you aware that there are new notebooks/tablets with Thunderbolt ports being released? They make it possible to have a thin-and-light for on the go and will soon see docked eGPU enclosures courtesy of MSI's GUS-II or BPlus TH05.

I'm keeping a list of Thunderbolt-equipped notebooks in the thin-and-light link in my sig. A 14" Gigabyte U2442N (GT640M), 14" Lenovo T430s (NVS5200M) or 15" Macbook Pro (GT650M) have a dGPU and 900P+ LCDs so could meet your requirements as standalone units but also offer a Thunderbolt port to give higher performance docked graphics options. The 15" Macbook Pro with a high performance i7-quad CPU but unfortunately is outside of your budget.

Could even downscale to a very portable 11.6" Acer W700 tablet with 1080P-IPS LCD and Thunderbolt port: Anandtech: Acer's Iconia W700 Ivy Bridge Windows 8 Tablet: The Start of Something Big. Though it's probably going to sport a slower ULV cpu like ultrabooks use.

[bakto]

I thought Thunderbolt ports were just a type of USB port? How would that affect physical specs of a laptop?

So with the new Dell XPS 15 being released today, I'm almost sold on it. However, is there any reason to wait until the end of summer? Is a pricecut and/or tinkering of the product likely to happen in the next couple months?

[bakto]

Bump, moves fast

[bakto]

One more bump...