Laptop with AMD APU E-450 or A8-3500M

There is a huge performance difference between the E and A series APUs.
Are you sure the E-450 is a player for what you want?

My main use is for development, word processing, excel, presentation. Rare occasion to do Photoshop and some CAD. But 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy' so I'm probably gonna watch some movies and play some games. I'm looking for longest battery use and realize there's a big performance difference between E-450 and A8-3500. So I'd rather prefer A8. If I can't get A8 along with the other specs, I'll have to settle for E-450. Thanks.

EDIT: I wish the manufacturers have implement a 'Power Search' similar to NewEgg. Makes my life a whole lot easier..  

well, E-350 can definitely handle movies, hulu, netflix streaming- I use one in my HTPC. The E-350 is going to be strong enough for word processing, probably most of the development, excel, presentation,etc. photoshop will tax it but if for retouching photos and/or you're not working with giant RAW files, should be ok. games, well that could get difficult. I don't know of any E-350 laptops with discrete GPUs. but the Radeon 6310 is probably a stronger GPU than most other integrated GPUs. They also promise pretty good battery life.

The A series though promises more sheer performance and probably better availability with discrete GPUs.

I was thinking the same too that's why I really liked that HP dv7-6165us, supposed to give 10.5 hours of light applications use with 9-cell battery. But I couldn't find the part/accessory to hookup the 2nd HDD at HP's website. I've read about some problems with the automatically switching of GPU with dv6 and dv7 models but I don't know if the problem is only for Intel CPU + AMD GPU. With that problem, it seems that both HP and AMD are reluctant to fix the driver which gives my reluctance to buy that laptop.

Toshiba Satellite P770D CTO 17" laptop
A6-3400 or A8-3500 APU, 17" 1600x900 LCD, dual hard drive option, backlight keyboard option, 12-cell Battery option.

15" Satellite P750D has just the 1366x768 resolution and no dual hard drive option.

Even the 14" Satellite P740D has the 12-cell Battery option.

Nice!! Thanks. The info kind of scared me at first:

Minimum Specs (before customization)

* AMD® Quad-Core A6 Accelerated Processor
* Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
* 4GB memory
* 500GB hard drive
* Mobile Intel® HD Graphics << LOL??
* DVD SuperMulti drive

But then reading the Specs tab, I knew it was a typo of some kind.

Too much cut & paste from the non-D model.

Do you think if this HP dv6zqe is a bit steep for $905?

9-cell battery, 15.6" with 1920x1080p, max RAM 16GB, Blu-Ray player + DVD-multi

OTOH, that P770D looks really nice.

AWESOME!! Thank you very much for your help WR2!!!

Best answer selected by twentytwenty.