I recently secured a job as a technical writer (proposal development) in an IT firm. The company will be providing a laptop when I am in the office, but for remote work, I will need my own Laptop. I am buying a Laptop after a decade so I am willing to spend up to 1000$. I am a Windows user, not a gamer but would like my Laptop to handle programs like Solidworks, Staad, Revit, Ansys, Matlab, etc, since I have a Mechanical Engineering background. I will mostly be using these programs as a hobbyist but may do some freelance design work. Ideally, I would want 11th generation i5 or its AMD equivalent, dedicated graphics card and 16 GB RAM. However, 8GB RAM is also acceptable, if future upgrade is possible. SSD of 256 GB is fine, battery life of 5 hrs would be good, but 3 hrs is also acceptable. I don't care much for weight & aesthetics. I really dig a 2-in-1 type of Laptop, but do realize that they generally come with the soldered Ram.
I looked at some options (Lenovo P series, ThinkPad, etc) but mostly these are mobile workstation types and go over my budget. Is my budget too tight for the requirements & specs I have mentioned? I would really appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.
