Reddit mentions of Toshiba Satellite Radius 11 L15W-B1120 Convertible 2 in 1 Touchscreen Laptop (Pentium, 4GB, 128GB SSD)

> I'm not sure if 4GB is enough for what I need. In regards to note taking, I would delete the majority of those documents at the end of each semester, but would most likely keep lesson plans much longer/forever.

I think you misunderstood something here. 4 GB of memory is not the amount of storage you have. It's the amount of RAM, which determines how many application you can "run at once". 4 GB of memory (RAM) is enough for web browsing and doing stuff in Office.

The amount of storage the Lenovo Yoga 2 you mentioned has is 500 GB (the HDD). Big enough to hold tens of thousands of MP3s or millions of Office files. Even all five seasons of Game of Thrones in BluRay quality won't need more than 40 GB. Also keep always a back up of your files in a separate place. Hard drives can fail and your data can be lost. Use either an external storage (USB thumb drive or an external HDD) or cloud storages to back up your files.

You probably looked at this Lenovo Yoga 2 2-in-1. It will do the job, but don't expect stellar performance. It will take some time to boot up or to open an application. Personally I would go for something else.

HP Pavilion x360 - 13t:

• 13.3 inch, 1366x768p IPS touchscreen
  
• Intel i3-6100U + 4 GB of RAM
  
• 500 GB HDD
  
• Intel HD 520 graphics
  
• Price: $469
  
  A bit over your budget, but you would get a laptop with a bigger display (which is nice for doing stuff in Office) and a more powerful processor. It weighs a bit more (3.77 lbs), but it's still quite portable. And you can have it in a red colour, if you're interested.
  
  Another one would be the Dell Inspiron 11.6 i3000:
  
  
• 11.6 inch, 1366x768p IPS touchscreen
  
• Intel Pentium N3700 + 4 GB of RAM
  
• 128 GB SSD
  
• Intel HD graphics
  
• Price: $449
  
  It has less storage than the HP or the Lenovo, but it's not an usual HDD. It's a SSD (solid state disk). It doesn't have any moving parts like an HDD. Advantages are that it's way faster (boots up in a couple of seconds, Office will open up almost instantly) and that the chance it gets damaged (for example through dropping the laptop) is almost zero. The Dell is also available in red or in gold at Best Buy (or at Staples).
  
  But if you don't want to spend all of your money, then take a look at these:
  
  
• Toshiba Satellite Radius 11 L15W-B1120 for $387
  
• Dell Inspiron 11.6 i3147 for $349

I'm going to tell you right now that for STEM grad school it would be extremely helpful to shell out for a laptop that will last you at least 3-4 years. You will want to be using it for an all-in-one machine that includes typing, Matlab, Solidworks, and other various programs. You can't do that with a tablet. What you'll end up doing is buying a tablet and then realizing you need a laptop for programs and have to juggle with them.

I just came to this same crossroads at the beginning of the year. I had my laptop since 2011 April so it was 5 years old. Poor thing was running on its last legs and was throwing me boot error messages in addition to the battery being dead (and so old they don't make them). I decided it was time to take old Yeller behind the shed.

If you are willing to increase the budget I just bought this in May and am in love with it: https://www.amazon.com/LG-gram-13Z950-Laptop-White/dp/B0158XJX6U

It was on sale for $650 when I bought it and the SSD has made my life wonderful. They borrowed the design philosophy behind Macs for the aesthetics and weight.

However, it seems important to you that you have the ability to use touchscreen. What I would suggest is looking into a 2-in-1 tablet/laptop and biting the bullet in cost. I grew up in a poor family and I know what it's like to hate buying anything. I had the laptop in my Amazon cart for TWO WEEKS before I pulled the trigger. But this is an investment and you should invest in something that will solidly perform for you for the next 4-5 years, not something to put along for 2 until you realize you need another upgrade.

What you really need is the next generation laptops that have solidstate drives and no CD-Rom drive. They are frankly unnecessary in this day and age of flash drives and cloud storage. I only have a 256 Gig HD and it works very well for me. The tradeoff is boot times of 10 seconds or less. No joke.

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-i5547-7475sLV-15-6-Inch-Touchscreen-processor/dp/B00MZN8YAI/ref=sr_1_18?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1466101896&sr=1-18&keywords=lg+touchscreen+laptop

https://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Satellite-L15W-B1120-Convertible-Touchscreen/dp/B00REWQNXK/ref=sr_1_9?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1466102027&sr=1-9&keywords=touchscreen+laptop+solid+state Under $500 and under 3 lbs.

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-2---1-Touch-Screen-Laptop/dp/B015EE3OJA/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1466102027&sr=1-3&keywords=touchscreen+laptop+solid+state

Hope this helps.