I've been looking at N+1 laptop reviews over the past few months and visited pretty much every IT-shop in town to poke, prod and rub the physical examples out there, looking for a laptop that would match these criteria:
I've looked and looked and things always come short in at least one criteria - I look at Dell Precision M4800 and the FHD screen has a TN panel (i cannot afford the 3K IPS Dells atm), I look at MSI gaming series and everyone says they overheat like there's no tomorrow, plus that hideous badge... And so on...
Have a blindingly fast processor - i7 preferred, maybe quad-core?
Have an option to upgrade to 16GB of RAM or more (while 8GB would be OK today i'd like some future-proofing here)
Feature a graphics card capable of handling Photoshop (photo only, no video edit), CAD, simpler games (Civ V and EVE Online are the only ones i touch these days)
Full-HD resolution or greater IPS panel with accurate sRGB reproduction
Have a fast SSD drive in combination with a 1TB or larger traditional drive
Be built like a tank (Dell Precisions come to mind) and be discrete enough (alien skulls and "Gamer-something" badges are not welcome)
Stay cool-ish under load, i want a laptop not a stove
Enable me to connect a high resolution monitor (DisplayPort probably?)
Have decent battery life (let's say 5 hours of WiFi surfing)
Have Win7 or Win8/8.1
Size and weight
CD/DVD drive
Touchscreen
I've looked and looked and things always come short in at least one criteria - I look at Dell Precision M4800 and the FHD screen has a TN panel (i cannot afford the 3K IPS Dells atm), I look at MSI gaming series and everyone says they overheat like there's no tomorrow, plus that hideous badge... And so on...