Does 'CUDA' mean anything to you and do you need the maximum number of cores for training and/or inference? Then get whatever is available in your locale with a

Does 'CUDA' mean anything to you and do you need the maximum number of cores for training and/or inference? Then get whatever is available in your locale with an RTX 4090, from Alienware, MSI, ASUS, Dell, or whomever. Hope you enjoy garishly-lighted logos, proprietary power supplies, and carrying a hefty backpack, though. Do you need to run Linux natively, and/or need built-in 4G/5G WWAN, and/or have above-average RAM requirements? Then, get a ThinkPad X, T or P-series (the latter for up to 128 GB of memory). Is Visual Studio (or any other truly Windows-only app) a requirement for your job, and/or do you want a true Linux shell experience without the hassle of native Linux? Then, get any Zen4-or-i7 / 8-or-16GB / 1TB+ NVMe Windows 11 laptop from Lenovo, HP or whomever. A clean-wipe-the-OEM-crap-away Win11 Enterprise + Office install (which your workplace most likely will have available, or you can create yourself as part of an Office365 subscription plus a bit of work) will do just fine. That plus WSL2 is a thing of, almost, beauty. Otherwise, get an M3 MacBook. Air if it works for you (no fan! no noise!), 'Pro' otherwise. Crisp display (but heed the limitations on external monitors!), excellent performance, slightly-weird-yet-tolerable OS, not great for Linux-shell-things (I mean, Homebrew is just excentric...), but a great default choice. However, do keep in mind that laptops will always have a limited thermal envelope, and that if you just need to wring every last bit of performance out of hardware, offloading at least a fraction of your workload to a properly-preferably-water-cooled desktop and/or server is inevitable, and may fundamentally change your requirements for said laptop...