We've had a soft spot for Lenovo's IdeaPad U design since the pre-Ultrabook IdeaPad U260. The IdeaPad U310 is Lenovo's latest and greatest IdeaPad Ultrabook with a 13.3" gloss display and that cool journal or book design. The U310 is the perfect back to school machine because it's affordable at around $760 and durable thanks to the aluminum unibody casing.
The IdeaPad U310 runs on a third generation Intel Core i5 1.7GHz CPU with 4 gigs of RAM and a spacious 500 gig hard drive with a 32 gig SSD to speed up Windows operations and boot times. It has a better than average keyboard among Ultrabooks (great for typing those papers) and a very good glass trackpad. It has a healthy heaping of ports including Ethernet.