I have been pretty satisfied with my HP Envy 15 purchased last March, for roughly the same price that a MBP would have cost me. Differences between it and a MB

I have been pretty satisfied with my HP Envy 15 purchased last March, for roughly the same price that a MBP would have cost me. Differences between it and a MBP: Slightly lighter. No cool magnetic charger thing; instead, power brick. Battery life is comparatively awful -- I usually get about an hour and a half. (I don't personally care about battery life.) Envy has better resolution at 15" -- 1920x1080. Envy has what appears to be slightly better graphics card. (That is, a slightly better graphics card a year ago as opposed to what the new MBPs have today. It kicked the crap out of the last-generation ones.) Envy has SSD+HDD instead of having SSD + built-in optical drive. I'm personally much happier with it, since resolution and being able to play games on it are a big deal for me. Not sure what HP's offerings look like today. Other laptops that don't appear to suck, but which I have no personal experience with, include IBM ThinkPads and some of Sony's Vaio series.