Ultra-portable laptop with swappable drives

[jamesb]

Now that I've got the beast all set up and tuned so that I'm happy with it, I need something a little more portable to take into the office, and to conferences. This means that there are some specific requirements I want any proposal to meet.

 

Reasonable memory and processor (reasonable defined as 8GB, and preferably a quad-core processor so I can spin up a few utility VMs).

Reasonable internal HDD (500GB is enough here).

Ideally, swappable secondary hard drive with four or five 'spares', the idea being that I can use different installs on different drives for different purposes. Alternatively I can do the same with a decent SD card reader and a pocketful of cards, so this isn't that urgent.

Portable, with at least 4 hours battery (preferably more).

 

Nice to have would be a 2-in-1, but that's not particularly important.

 

Budget maxes out at £500. I'm happy with refurbs or similar, but ideally want something sooner (much sooner) rather than later if possible.

 

All ideas, thoughts, suggestions welcome. Thanks for your help.

[davethetekkie]

I'm running a VeryPC ThinBook 15 on an i5 with 8GB, 240GB SSD and 1080p IPS panel... And she's a beaut. One of my primaries has taken a few of the ThinBook 14's with 4GB and smaller SSD and they are perfectly capable and should be well within your budget. SD reader is integral so should do the trick for your additional storage. Unfortunately for that money the only ultra portable you'll get will be running an Atom or Core-M CPU... Have a chat with Colin at VeryPC; he's a top geezer and he'll see you right!