"new" in Nov '15: Dell Inspiron 15 i5558-5718slv; i5-4xxx, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD Windows 10: Nuwen MinGW, IntelliJ for C++, Java development respectively VirtualBox

"new" in Nov '15: Dell Inspiron 15 i5558-5718slv; i5-4xxx, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD Windows 10: Nuwen MinGW, IntelliJ for C++, Java development respectively VirtualBox VM's: Ubuntu 15.10, CentOS 7 Pros: cost: $400; 1080p IPS screen; backlit keyboard!; reasonable battery life (4-5 hours?) Cons: Windows 10 (I prefer Windows 8.1 (my last laptop)); slow HDD (planning to upgrade to SSD soon); fan is not silent I know there's a strong case to be made for spending more $$$ on a better laptop since "[I] use it all the time" and I can easily afford it, but "parsimonious me" objects spending 2x-4x my $400 baseline price for a laptop that might perform 1.4x better. This laptop replaced a 3 year old $400 Toshiba i3-3110 laptop with 8GB RAM; according to my benchmark (a clean parallel build of one of my C++ projects) the new is only 6% faster than the old. I think my upcoming SSD install will make a big difference. And: I'm among the apparent minority of programmers who prefers and requires a keyboard with numeric (for me: cursor) keypad. This requirement "narrows the field" of candidate-laptops substantially.