Any recommendations for an i5 laptop? (Need B4 September)

I'm looking for a decent laptop (i5 preferably) that will last me a good 2 or 3 years, I am willing to pay for warranty. I don't really trust hp, asus would be a plus really =)

other desired specs: I prefer >4 gb of ram and 6 or 8 cell battery. If the deal is good I'll take a 15.6" but I'm looking for something around 14".
I'd use it mostly for school that is quartus, matlab, netbeans, orcad pspice, visual studio, possibly some modeling software every now and then like mentor graphics.

I have until mid august, should I wait ? Are the prices going to go down for sandy bridge because of ivy bridge coming out? thanks for your input!

Laptop prices continually come down, with regards to power.
Or another way to say it is that with the passing of time, you'll get a more powerful machine for the same amount of money, so if you don't need it for a couple of months, you can be pretty sure that if you wait 'till one or two weeks before you actually need it, that you'll get either a better price or a more powerful machine for the same price as today's not so powerful machine.
I hope that came out well enough to be understood.
There are days when my words can't quite express what my brain is saying.

My only advise would be to stick with the business line stuff. In my experience, the consumer grade stuff (HP DV series for example) is often made of cheap plastic and inferior parts. For the extra ~$100-200, you can often find a comparable business line laptop with similar specs that will save you a lot of headaches down the road.

Personally, I like HP Probook and Elitebook, Dell Latitude and Precision (and XPS for consumer line), and ASUS. Lenovo seems to be pretty good as well, though I'm not as familiar with their lines.

You can check on +echbargains (won't let me post link for some reason), as they often have a good amount of laptops listed on sale from various stores/websites...and include any coupon codes you need.

Quote from AngryPirate : My only advise would be to stick with the business line stuff. In my experience, the consumer grade stuff (HP DV series for example) is often made of cheap plastic and inferior parts. For the extra ~$100-200, you can often find a comparable business line laptop with similar specs that will save you a lot of headaches down the road. Personally, I like HP Probook and Elitebook, Dell Latitude and Precision (and XPS for consumer line), and ASUS. Lenovo seems to be pretty good as well, though I'm not as familiar with their lines. You can check on +echbargains (won't let me post link for some reason), as they often have a good amount of laptops listed on sale from various stores/websites...and include any coupon codes you need.

I second this although the recent DV6T series is very solid. I would recommend an elitebook/latitude/thinkpad for what you want to do, especially if you do not baby your stuff. If you want to go the extra mile and get ISV certification (assuming you are in some sort of applied math/engineering program where you'll be using $5k+ software suites), get a Precision, Thinkpad W series, or Elitebook workstation series. The beauty with the workstation stuff is that it is bomb proof (usually mil-spec), stays cool (good overclocker), and comes with a decent video card.

yes business class is the way to go sign up for an online backup service or store copies of all your stuff in the cloud in case a drive fails, modeling stuff does use the video card so I would get a dedicated one. if you are a bit of a klutz you may want to look at something like Dell's complete care if you drop the laptop or spill a beverage on it it is still covered under warranty check the HP or Dell outlets

Quote from AngryPirate : My only advise would be to stick with the business line stuff. In my experience, the consumer grade stuff (HP DV series for example) is often made of cheap plastic and inferior parts. For the extra ~$100-200, you can often find a comparable business line laptop with similar specs that will save you a lot of headaches down the road. Personally, I like HP Probook and Elitebook, Dell Latitude and Precision (and XPS for consumer line), and ASUS. Lenovo seems to be pretty good as well, though I'm not as familiar with their lines. You can check on +echbargains (won't let me post link for some reason), as they often have a good amount of laptops listed on sale from various stores/websites...and include any coupon codes you need.

I would add that the accidental warranty offered by many OEM's (I have experience with dell here) are well worth the $200-300 for a collage student who plans to take the laptop around if you want it to last that long assuming you are ordering a fairly pricey machine. Between myself and another family member we got our money out of it easily. Dell replaced 2 LCD's, Optical Drive, 3 Hard drives, keyboard. One of these occurred during a study abroad in the UK too. I don't want this to reflect bad on Dell because they make pretty good machines, equipment just gets beatup when its mobile even if you take good care of it. My Dell laptop from school is now about 6 years old, still works to this day. The warranty also covers accidents, liquid damage, just about anything. It also means depending on the level Dell Next Day's the part and if you want someone to install it.

Other things, Ivy Bridge is out now, but production is Ramping up now. So as lines get refreshed you will see more and more. Prices should fall somewhat on the Sandy Bridge parts but the SB stuff wont see a huge drop since IB is similar in performance with a better GPU and new production size. Both easily beat AMD's offerings. Windows 8 will be out this fall too so I would expect you will see some upgrade opportunities from OEM's with this and possible sales. Not sure you will see many 14" laptops with 8 cell batteries. Since that would be a pretty big bump on the back.

Budget, It's hard to help you with models if we don't have a budget.