>Sorry for the shaggy dog story- but in the end, 2 vendors had suitable options and both required a special build. Dell offers a mobile workstation with a partially carbon fiber case and fast processors up to Xeon, while HP offers an aluminium and magnesium cased Zbook G4 that can take multiple hard drives and optionally their amazing Dreamcolor UHD display. I went for the Zbook UHD with the fancy display, a blazingly quick OS SSD and an I7-7820 processor. Interestingly, Dell offered a Windows 7 downgrade that actually was quite interesting- but looks as if I'm shoehorned into Win10 Pro to get this HP. So now I'm part of the "yay, everybody is moving to Windows 10" statistic. ;-)

We had two HP laptops in the family in 2007 and they both died of construction errors - mine had the thin heatsink which would eventually unsolder the graphic card (the $0,001 fix - if you know in advance, you stuff a cent between the existing sink and the chip, and it cools properly), which was a matter of class suit back then. It survived about five years, though the last three were involving an average of six reboots until the video chip would have proper contact. Eventually sold it fo 80$ to my HW guy ("If I can fix it, I'll buy it"). Daghter's had the wireless NIC overheating and eventually frying some of its neighborhood - a matter of another class suit, because this typically happened one month after warranty. She replaced the motherboard herself. Not to mention they lied about the $100 rebate.

And, mind you, I wasn't using that laptop much; I'm the desktop guy and don't travel much anymore. My wife's Toshiba was bought at pretty much the same time and shows no signs of aging even though it was in regular daily use. It's just that we retired that box because it runs XP (we bought it quickly before we'd have to increase the statistics of the Vista) and we have some good software on it, but the recent browser updates made watching youtube on it impossible. But when we may need that software again, we'll just pull it out and I fully expect it to just work.

The worst mouse I ever had was a HP. And the worst pack of writable CDs too - perhaps one in ten would report no errors on burn, and then with some luck I may even read it once.

>Fingers crossed, this one will be the last Windows notebook I ever buy. I'm thinking I might grab a new battery after 3 or 4 years this time, to make sure the battery doesn't let the rest of it down. The machine itself has all sorts of durability certifications including drop resistance and a spill-proof keyboard, so I'm expecting it to last and last.

It's a bit awkward to type with crossed fingers...