Hi, I am a statistician working with very large data sets that I analyze with programs that run on available memory. I tend to travel frequently for work and would like to have a powerful machine to run my code. My current laptop is an ~2 year old HP with a Intel i7 processor and 16GB of RAM, which I often use to the limit. It has been a great laptop but I run it pretty hard, and I'm starting to run into a few overheating issues (I do dock it to a fan). I am looking into buying a new laptop with a great processor, a big hard drive, and 32GB of RAM. Originally I was going to go with a Lenovo ThinkPad, which my colleagues swear by, but I have heard about build issues with the most recent W540. I am not a gamer, but when I was searching newegg, Alienware laptops came up as company offering 32GB of RAM. I know Alienware is now owned by Dell, but I found I could get everything I wanted in an Alienware 17 for cheaper than what I was finding when building a Dell Precision M6800 for my needs. These are the specs I built on the Alienware that I care most about:
Memory: 32GB DDR3L at 1600MHz (4 x 8G)
Hard Drive: 256GB mSATA SSD Boot + 1TB 5400RPM SATA 6Gb/s
Processor: 4th Generation Intel Cor i7-4910MQ processor (Quad Core, 8MB Cache, Overclocked up to 4.1GHz)
My question: am I overlooking some major characteristic of a "gaming" laptop that would be inappropriate for hardcore computing? Does anyone have any specific reasons for preferring a Lenova, Dell, or HP workstation?