DONE: what would you buy?

[oj]

Hello, all.

What laptop would you buy if you had the following specs:

Price is the last consideration.
You would prefer intel chipsets all around for painless GNU/Linux compatibility.
Dual boot with win7 ultimate.
i7 quad core or better, with 12GB RAM or more. (would entertain AMD CPU but video and wifi is a must to work 'out of the box')
Zero hassle with UEFI.
15 inch 1080p screen minimum, 17 inch max.
No gee-whiz touchscreen, multi graphics, SSD or other 'cutting edge' peripherals: a plain vanilla powerhouse.

I've been asked to come up with such a system, and the reviews, blogs, advertisements etc are overwhelming. The goal is to have win7 and Mageia living side by side on the best possible hardware. If any of you developers herein had your dream machine (minus any of the 'extras' mentioned) what would you buy?

Thanks. BTW if you know of a system that meets the above but does have functional touch screen, multi graphics etc please mention as well.

Ozzie

[jiml8]

I built that machine this past april. I purchased an MSI barebones kit, put an i7 quad-core (plus hyperthreading) in it, 16 GB of RAM (it will hold 32 GB), and a 1 TB SSD (it will hold another drive plus 3 mSATA ports).

Works great. I use it as a mobile dev platform. I'm becoming a bit of a gypsy, and it so far has gone with me to the UK for a two week motorcycle-plus-development trip, and two trips around the USA, where I combined my purpose for the trip with plenty of dev work done in motel rooms.

[jiml8]

Oh...and...

Due to recent disclosures of disreputable practices by Lenovo, I would rate them an "avoid at all costs" manufacturer.

If you do not already know why, check these out:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-roo ... e-deleted/
http://marcrogers.org/2015/02/19/lenovo ... s-all-ssl/

Note particularly that these are TWO SEPARATE INCIDENTS, within the last year. Looks to me like Lenovo is absolutely untrustworthy.

[oj]

Thanks. I guess lenovo is out. Any of you out there have i7 or amd oct core that just plain works?

[wintpe]

I would always choose samsung or asus.

stay away from acer as well, as they tend to be targeted at low priced consumer PC's.

I take it you want a desktop replacment from your specs, rather than a true portable.

I can realy recomend asus's equiverlent to the macbook, the ultrabook.

They have a new one now, although it does not match your specs, just a different way of solving it, i find ultrabooks, with there excelent full HD or better screen, even on a 13 inch laptop are excellent, the UX305 at 1.2kg is the replacement for my ux31a.

but if its truly a 15 or 17 you want, then its going to be a heavy beast.

I would look at the asus equivalent to the macbook pro in that case.

http://www.asus.com/uk/Notebooks/N551JQ/

which is equipped with a Intel® Core™ i7 4710HQ Processor, support upto 16gig , but alas is 2.7 kg


regards peter

[oj]

The guy bought this: http://www.itcsales.co.uk/acatalog/Dell ... tions.html But he had to return it, ironically windows kept locking up. Didn't know if it was specific to the machine he got or if his modification (requesting win 7 not win 8.1 which it normally came with) was at fault. He even reinstalled windows 3 times with no luck.

Anyway, it wouldn't run Mageia, so he put Mint 17.2 KDE on it, which ran beautifully. He wasn't happy not being able to use Mageia but was willing to settle, except the windows lock ups were a non-starter.

He ended up with some HP thing, "Z book" with similar specs. (primarily 4th gen i7) It's not nearly as rugged as the Dell, and the resolution is about half that of the Dell. He says it runs Mageia perfectly out of the box. Well done! Thanks Mageia team for all the great work, and for the tips provided in this thread. (unfortunately the guy didn't take my suggestion to find an Asus system meeting his specs.I don't know how he ended up buying what he did)

[isadora]

Please oj, don't forget to mark the topic [DONE].
You can do so, by editing the subject/title in the first message in this topic.
Write [DONE] to the left of subject/title, thanks ahead.