I have been in the market to buy me a new laptop and I need some help. Currently, I have a 12.1″ laptop from Lenovo. Although I love the portability and battery life of the laptop, I find the keyboard too small which cramp up my hands. Every time I use it, my hands act up. This is not good because I have been diagnosed with cubital tunnel syndrome, slightly different from the infamous carpal tunnel syndrome. I basically want a new laptop with the same features, but with slightly larger screen with fuller keyboard pad. After doing some extensive research, I have narrowed my selections to two laptops.

ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop: This laptop caught my attention for its claim of 12 hours of battery life! I know it will probably never get full 12 hours during normal use, but according to the customer reviews on Amazon.com, it gets a lofty 9-10 hours after normal use. It is also equipped with the new LED HD display, which is becoming more popular. With 4 GB of RAM memory along with 500 GB hard drive space and 1.3 GHz processing speed, it should be plenty powerful to use for my everyday computing activities, including blogging. The only negative aspect I notice is the 0.3 megapixel webcam integrated with the laptop. 0.3?? Why even have a video camera then? It also doesn’t come with any optical drives, but I guess that’s OK since I don’t plan on watching DVDs on this laptop. It will get annoying trying to install new software to the machine however. $699 is a little pricey per specifications, but it’s still affordable.

Acer Aspire Timeline AS3810TZ-4925: This laptop is $100 less expensive than the ASUS above. It’s listed at $599 at Amazon.com and the specifications are very similar to ASUS. However, it only claims to have 8 hours of battery life, which still is very respectable. Hard drive space is 320 GB and has only 3 GB RAM memory. This one also does not have an optical drive. At $100 cheaper, I have to consider it.

What do you think? ASUS or Acer? Right now, I’m leaning towards the ASUS but I’m not 100% sold on it yet. If you have any personal experience with any of these laptops, please leave a comment. I appreciate it in advance.