1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9341506
2: http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lapt...
for me, it needs to last 5+ years (sorry, company policy).
Anything with comparable specs (15", core i7 quad core, 8-16 gb ram, 1920X1080+ screen, decent battery life, 3yr support and <=5 lbs) comes to same price as a 15" mbp. and this mbp and others in my company lasted 5+ years without any issues. Well, i had to get my logic board replaced due to some known issue, which was covered. battery life is awesome, dont care for keyboard but its ok, hate OS X. Also, I want to move 100% to Linux but not at the cost of a good hardware. Yes, I can install ubuntu on mbp but whats the point then in paying apple tax and not everything works flawlessly in ubuntu on mac hardware, already tried it. They just seem to make the best hardware at the moment.
m3800 is very close to these requirements but ends up costing same as 15" mbp and battery life is not as good.
w540 is heavy
t series dont have discrete graphics
Thinkpad's T series fits some of your bill but I doubt the screen is high density enough.
PS - I must be the only person on earth who thinks the user experience with 1080p is better than super-high resolution. Currently most operating systems (Windows, Linux, and OS X to a degree) suck at high DPI so your fonts and UI elements shrink as the resolution increases.
maybe its windows compatibility issue
[1]http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np7339-clevo-w230sd-eta-0320201...
For me - the touch screen, the pen and the extreme portability more than make up for the lack of GPU and if I need to play high-end games I can use my Playstation, Xbox or my tower workstation that has an Nvidia GPU. Outside of games though, I think the Surface Pro's GPU is fine for most graphics work using Photoshop, et al.
1) 16GB RAM (or more) 2) High density display 3) SSD drive 4) Quad core or better CPU 5) Small and thin 6) Discrete NVIDIA GPU (not the Intel integrated crap)
Apple's MBP is the only machine I know of that fits this bill. I'm becoming less and less a fan of OSX, but you can't argue against the hardware. Can anyone point me to a non-Apple machine that does these things?
EDIT:
Thanks for the pointers! I'll look into the Dell and Lenovo machines mentioned here. It's been a year or so since I've looked for machines comparable to my older MBP, so it's cool to see some new options.