I started out with the i7 11th gen, it was a solid experience for whatever I threw at it. 4c8ts up to over 4ghz isn’t suddenly useless just because it is a few years older. Keep it cool, and you’ll even get some decent lightweight gaming in on a day off.
Things to keep note of:
- the 11th gen suffers from an RTC battery drain problem, not an issue if you actually use the machine every day, and charge it at least once a week or so.
- The different expansion cards draw more or less power than one another, the USB-C uses the least, the HDMI (?) uses the most.
- Different NVME drives use more or less power.
Your quest for longer battery life will probably lead to the 61wh battery, but I will note that with a “standard” university style use case: note taking, text entry, an IDE or text editor running… You’ll probably still get most of the way through the day on a charge. If you start adding in video, I’d keep one of those small GaN chargers on hand and top off from time to time. (There is a nice anker unit that is 100 watts that will charge a little quicker, and YMMV, but you can trickle charge with a 5v supply as well in a pinch).