Ok, I have a computer allowance for my day job and the budget is right around ~ $1500 USD, but can go a little higher then that. I am just looking for solid choices and reasons why they are the better choice. Main needs: Quad Core CPU (preferably i7) Strong GPU 4 - 6 Gig of ram decent size screen Reliability Uses: Heavy duty modeling and design SSA daily stuff BOINC crunching (very CPU and GPU intensive) Limitations, needs to be from Newegg or Amazon. I have been looking for over a week, and have had my eye on a couple, but wanted to get a few educated opinions. Bromo has been of assistance, and I wanted to see what a few other people thought. I had considered using the same funds for building a sweet desktop, but with life being what it is, I need to be more mobile since I will not be at my own machines that often. I had a few Toshiba's in the past from previous jobs that were trusty, and a couple of PowerBooks from way back when that did me right, but it has been a while so I am a tad rusty on the laptop world. Thought about skipping a paid OS, and run my trusty friend Ubunutu, but I need to run Windows due to a few programs that are not usable on Linux. Usually I would just barrel ahead and find one that seemed decent and grabbed it, but why waste such a powerful tool as the SSA member base. Thanks for any ideas.