need a new laptop what does everyone suggest? i need it for university, so needs to be able to use for the next 5 years without much of an issue, also probably needs to be able to run solidworks, needs to be quick, good battery life, small scrren...? portable?
im really interested in the macbook aluminium unibody, but it might be underpowered unless anyone knows otherwise?
What suggestions do you have?

Thanks very much
Al

Buy the cheapest Windows Laptop you can find that has the features you want. Any new laptop can most likely run any program you want. You might want to check the graphics card requirements of SolidWorks. I am pretty sure SolidWorks is not supported on Macs. This one would probably be sufficent.

[Edited on 20/6/2009 by Keith Weiland]

Check the graphics card requirements for SolidWorks against the laptop you are looking at on the solidworks site, we have tried to run solidworks on a laptop with a substandard graphics card, wont render and locks up most of the time, ended up spending over a grand on a Dell.

I would recomend one of the Toshiba Sattelite Pro machines.... we have ordered around 1500 at work over the last three years and are still using most of them in quite an abusive environment!

I run SolidWorks 2009 on my Samsung Q45 (only 2 USB ports though, 12.1" screen, ultraportable), albeit somewhat more slowly than on my desktop PC. I would've thought that you'd want a fairly big screen for Solidworks and make sure you've got plenty of USB ports for your spacemouse and USB keys etc!

Dell are always worth a look...

Check the Solidworks website for video card compatibility first though!