Need a light, new laptop for Grad school

[WPCentral Question]

Hi.

I'm starting grad school and need a new laptop - something light and fast. I have had 3 Acer laptops in the past, that I have been really happy with, with one excursion into Mac land, with a MacBook Pro that I absolutely HATED, and which would give me a BSOD on a regular basis.

I want an i7 Haswell processor and 8gigs Ram, 256 SSD. I'm currently trying to decide between the Acer Aspire s7 and the Toshiba Ultrabook 13 i7s.

Any thoughts or personal experiences with either machine would be greatly appreciated. I'd love to actually see one "in the flesh" before purchasing, but that is proving to be next to impossible - I've yet to find one in and concrete store.

Thanks.

 

[sarim_xyz]

I am very much satisfied with my Dell XPS 14, which has been discontinued now. It is the 3rd Gen. i7, but Haswell models are available now. The best thing is that it is an ultrabook, so it is lightweight and of course, XPS looks beautiful. I personally don't like the looks of Acer. Also I would suggest a screen size of 14", I find it to be ideal screen size.