There definitely is that market segmentation. It's been there for as long as I can remember. The way I've gotten around it is spending $600 on an 18-month-old l

There definitely is that market segmentation. It's been there for as long as I can remember. The way I've gotten around it is spending $600 on an 18-month-old laptop which was in that ~1000-1200 bracket (i.e. more than good enough for the power-user to run 3 VMs at once + multi-monitor via a dock or just HDMI out at full 2600x1460 on a 27"). A W-series IBM of Ivybridge[1,2] at $550 is a steal. 32 gigs of RAM + SSDs being as cheap as they are and you'd be golden. [1] http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thinkpad-W530-i7-3720QM-Quad-Core-2-6GHz-8Gb-180Gb-SSD-1920x1080-Win7-1A-/201520230898?hash=item2eeb8ab1f2:g:wkcAAOSwoydWjEK7 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thinkpad-W530-i7-3720QM-Quad-... [2] These will command a premium, so you might have to wait 30 months rather than 18, just because of the value retention IBM holds in the W/T/X lines. The benefit is you get meticulous machines most of the time.