These laptops look simple, capable and don't stand out in any particular way.
These laptops will make a great side-kick to you music production gear. Their multi-core processors give you the necessary muscle to rip, encode or convert your audio craft without having to wait forever. Also, their on-board audio chips and high resolution screens offer a competent and mobile deputy to your existing tools and setup.
As a student or researcher in the social or physical sciences, these devices provide a good balance of portability and performance so that you're free to roam the labs or libraries with a machine that can competently multi-task your data crunching, "multi-tabbed browsing" and the production of academic content.