Screw the HP I know they're bad (compaq is a subsidiary of hp right? I used to have a compaq that went bad in a couple years). At the moment I am considering this with the upgraded touchpad, bluetooth, 9 cell battery, and the 2nd wifi option. I heard these things are indestructible and plan on ordering it soon ($775 discount ends the 15th).

As far as I've seen, Lenovo thinkpads' motherboards tend to fry pretty often. I know, that's what the college loaned to the students in the 2 years I was there, and for every 4 laptops 1 died in the space of those 2 years.

Honestly, the specs are good, but you're going to have a problem with the physical size of the computer if you're bringing it to class. Try not to go any larger than a 15-inch.

I just got the Thinkpad. It is very good, I can feel that its not loose/about to break or anything. It seems a lot more sturdy than the HP laptops all over my high school. There are just three problems:

 

1. The battery only lasts for ~3 hours with minimum settings. This seems unusually short for a 9-cell battery and much shorter than on Lenovo's website.

 

2. I cannot seem to disable the Nvidia NVS for the Intel HD graphics. This seems like a great battery saver. There is no option in BIOS to even select the integrated graphics.

 

3. Speaking of BIOS, I downloaded the latest one from Lenovo's software manager, and now it is impossible to access BIOS. It just goes straight to recovery.