Please, please post what you end up getting (model and place you purchased). I’m in a similar boat. FWIW, for work I tend to get Lenovo. My latest Thinkpad has a P7 SSD and 32 Gigs of Ram. I actually find the SSD and Ram give me more bang for the buck than the processor. As others stated the ThinkPads seems to take abuse well. This was about $2000
I need something simpler (and cheaper!) for home use. Like you, I’d like to be able to program on it. In my case Visual Studio. The 32 Gigs of ram is great, but suspect I could make do with 16. I’d be worried with less than that as Visual Studio, SQL Server Express, and other stuff I use tend to chew threw Ram. I don’t need a crazy fast gaming machine. 15″ seems like a good screen size. If I need more than that, I connect a monitor.
