T61 VS SL500, which one for engineering?

I have been looking at the prices and a T61 and Sl500 are about the same. I will be using this for Engineering school and wanted to know a couple of things.

What is the difference in the two models? How much memory can you put in a SL500, lenovo only lets you select up to 3GB of ram, I was wanting to go 4GB.

Whats the battery life difference between 6-cells and 9-cells (I know an exact number cant be given but a good estimate would be nice)

How big of a difference does WXGA or WSXGA+ make? Right now my PC has a resolution of 1280 x 1024

I will probably be running some simulations and some intense 3D modeling software like SolidWorks. Can the Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M (128MB) (highest in T61 model) handle that or should I go with the SL500's NVIDIA GeForce 9300M 256MB?

 

I had go with the SL500 with its newer penrynn processors P8400 or P8600...the difference is basically the looks and that the SL500 does not offer the magnesium alloy roll cage protection like the T61 does...I think you can put 4GB in the SL500 and fully use it if you upgrade it to a 64bit version of the operating system....and you can upgrade the memory to 4GB later by selecting 2GB 1DIMM first before buying another 2GB stick from another place like newegg, crucial, ocz and install it urself....but becareful of how this installment MAY void your warranty....i dunno about the battery....but if u need good battery time then go with the 9 cell....I'm not sure about the screen but I had go with the WXGA+....I am not sure about their graphics power too but the Quadro is more focused on graphics for work while Geforce is more of mainstream and consumer (multimedia and games)....but generally their graphics power should be quite similar.....so go with the SL500 because of newer processor which would help with your 3d modeling software although the GPU should be the bottleneck of the system for this.

 

it's not like you're going to be engineering the laptop


im doing engineering at UCSB and they don't even specify a laptop

you should be fine with either

like compiling is around the level of work the comp should handle

 

Memory is a CRU or Customer Replacement Unit in the T series. While anything is possible, I can't see why this would change for the SL series.