Funny I was asked this just the other day by my son! We did some research and the Lenovo with i7 proc 8GB RAM (to be upgraded later to 16GB), with SSD (256GB)

Funny I was asked this just the other day by my son! We did some research and the Lenovo with i7 proc 8GB RAM (to be upgraded later to 16GB), with SSD (256GB) was under £600 (which was his budget). It comes with Windows 10. So, take a look at Lenovo. --- Tangential thoughts below --- About 6 months ago I was given a Lenovo Thinkpad Ultrabook (i7, 20GB RAM) for a contract I was working on and was blown away by the performance compared to my MacBook Pro. I have been a Mac Fanboy for more than 10 years, but I find myself having a harder time to justify the premium on them. My personal MacBook Pro is very sluggish compared to the Ultrabook. Couple of nice things about the Ultrabook. I can run a Linux VM (actually multiple at the same time) for "real work" and dive back into Windows for things that aren't so reliable on Linux (e.g. WebEx). Also ready for the "Linux on Windows" thing Microsoft are doing - which I hate to admit actually looks quite cool. For my next personal dev laptop (next year) I will probably go for an i7 32GB Lenovo Thinkpad Ultrabook. I will probably leave Windows 10 on there. It really surprises me to say I probably won't by another MacBook Pro unless Apple get their finger out.