I would like to buy a second laptop to run Ubuntu, but I want something with incredible build quality. I'm an Apple user, so clearly I don't mind paying a premium (ta-dum tss).
The closest I've found is Lenovo, but their product still comes in a fully plastic enclosure containing a hundred screws and as many tacked on plastic panels as a Pontiac Aztek. I've read about their "roll cage", and I think that's a pretty cool idea, but it still doesn't hold up to Apple's unibody designs. I owned a T41 back around 2005 (best guestimate), so I'm not speaking entirely from ignorance of the product. I really don't feel it matches my MacBook Pro.
Now, you might say that I'm being unreasonable, but I have the money, and I'm willing to spend it. If anyone has a lead on a well-built laptop with the design simplicity of an Apple MacBook, I'm interested to hear about it.
I'm looking for:
Something in the 13" range. I don't need anything super-powerful (C2D and 2 GB of RAM should be fine). I do care about build quality. The primary use-case is sysadmin duty. I want something small and light to take on the road that still has a bash shell. I want to go Ubuntu, rather than a 13" MBP because I've been very impressed with the work coming out of the Ubuntu community lately, and I don't like to limit my world to Apple alone. All of our VPSs run Debian, which is similar enough to Ubuntu that I can bring over a lot of my dot-files and customizations.
Only when you compare unlike with like. As soon as you look at similar spec, design and build quality it is a different story.
Like the Dell Adamo "Macbook Air killer":