There are a lot of subpar Windows laptops out there, but there are at least some good ones to choose from. Last year around Christmas, I picked up an Asus Zenb

There are a lot of subpar Windows laptops out there, but there are at least some good ones to choose from. Last year around Christmas, I picked up an Asus Zenbook for under $700CDN on sale. 3200x1800 touch screen, 8GB RAM, and a trackpad that works as well (to me, at least) as the one on my MacBook Air. I was a little concerned that the Skylake Core m3 would be underpowered, but it hasn't felt slow during any of the dev tasks I've thrown at it. Benchmarks aren't always accurate, I know, but the ones I have run on both the Zenbook and my MBA show them to be about equal. It's not as fast as my 8 core, 32GB RAM desktop machine, but I don't expect it to be. The HP Elite looks pretty neat. I'll have to try one next time I'm at the MS Store if they have one on display.