Laptop for a Student

[nwimbledon]

I am buying a new laptop for my son. He has been suffering with a HP pavilion for two years and it is criminally slow. I have promised him a big improvement. He will mainly use it for Browsing, Office applications, streaming music and videos.

He does not play 3D games.
If anyone can have a look at the specs below and advise if they believe that these will be reasonably fast I would really appreciate it. One of them has a video card. If he is not gaming or video/photo editing will this make much difference to the performance?
If you have any suggestions for improvements these will be most welcome as well

Spec 1
Chassis & Display
UltraNote: 15.6" Matte HD LED Backlit Widescreen (1366x768)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-4340M (2.90GHz) 3MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
INTEL® HD GRAPHICS MEDIA ACCELERATOR 4600
1st Hard Disk
250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
UltraNote Series: 8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N CARD INC. BLUETOOTH 3.0

Spec 2

Chassis & Display
Cosmos Series: 15.6" Matte HD LED 16:9 Widescreen (1366x768)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-4340M (2.90GHz) 3MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 940M - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1st Hard Disk
250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader

 

[keynes]

The first one, no need to get a dedicated GPU for the uses you indicated and it should offer better battery life.

 

[Xailter]

Without a budget, a little hard to know how we can help optimise the selections. I personally own the below laptop and used it throughout University and it was great (modified slightly):

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/quotes/ultraNoteII-15/w5SGKdttrg/

-X

Side note: this has dropped like £150 since I bought this equivalent spec

 

[SlimCini]

They both will perform exactly the same. Same cpu, same ssd, same ram.

There are a few good value laptops in the review section with i5s and ssd's so I'd recommend checking those out before you press 'buy'.

 

[Giklab]

Get the Ultranote, but make sure you include the IPS screen.