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Yeah, I don't find the number pad at all useful, yet there it is on virtually all laptops. The last decent laptop that didn't have it was the Lenovo W530. But

• ptomato 12y ago
  Configuring the W540 you mentioned identically to the base model 15" RMBP ($2000) costs $1850. RMBP is ~ 1 lb lighter and .4" thinner, has a faster SSD, and gets about 3 hours more battery life. W540 has an optical drive, a removable battery, and a workstation graphics card. (Surprisingly, though, raw performance of that seems to be pretty similar to the Iris Pro 5200 in the RMBP, based on my minimal research.) In any case, $150 doesn't seem like an unreasonable difference to me, particularly considering Apple makes actually usable touchpads. (Reviews seems to indicate that the W540 touchpad is as bad as such things usually are.)
  • ansible 12y ago
    Yeah, the 'workstation' class laptops from Lenovo and Toshiba are a bit pricey. In general, depending on what you want to give up, you can get a i7, 15.6in 1080p screen, 16GB RAM and SSD for a little over $1000. That's with a discrete graphics chip and not terribly good battery life, because it is a mid-range gaming laptop. I've actually been looking at refurbished Macbook Pros too. Still thinking about it.