Funny you should ask; I've been scouring the land for a new machine as well for like a month now. And it's a hard time to be doing this, since macs are still macs but the "windows works" rug has been yanked out from underneath us with windows 8. The Mapbox guys and UVM-SAL crew have been pushing the macbook on me, but I think - even though I don't need ArcGIS - windows still makes more sense to me. Something about the not-really-linux crap of OSX annoys me :)
So I'm also looking for something pretty light and long-batteried, which brings up Bill D.'s point about 16GB of RAM. I'm not sure more than 8 is needed even for heavy geoprocessing and remote sensing. And indeed if high-octane is required it's probably cheaper to do it on AWS and blow out the tubes with 64GB of RAM. But that's just my aspirational solution.
I've narrowed it down to three possibilities:
- Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 13.3", w/ i7 and 8GB of RAM
- Sony VAIO Pro 13 w/ i7 and 8GB of RAM (and Haswell!)
- Waiting for Haswell to percolate into everything and send prices down a bit
Has anyone used either of the first two for both GIS and development?
I went through this process earlier this year, and bought in June.
I did not go the light-weight route, as you can see, but these are my specs:
Dell Mobile Precision M4700
Intel Core i7-3740QM, 2.7GHz
8.0GB, DDR3-1600 SDRAM
NVIDIA Quadro K2000M with 2GB GDDR3
750GB 2.5" 7200rpm Hard Drive
15.6 INCH UltraSharp Display (1920x1080)
Windows 7 Ultimate
Dell still sells Precisions and Alienware lappys with Win 7
I feel comfortable with 8GB of RAM
I went with the best Graphics card available instead of loading up on RAM, as I think that's what's limited my performance on previous laptops. It has room for more RAM if I ever need it
This is NOT a lightweight machine. It's big, thick, and bulky. But, it has a full size keyboard with numeric key-pad.
I did save my old m2400 14" lappy for out-of-office visits.