[brightball]

I continued on with my 17" 2011 MBP for years and finally committed to switch to Linux last year when Apple's hardware policy became clear.

I didn't want to do toe-in-the-water trial, so I researched for a while until I settled on something and ended up with a Dell Precision 7710. I really wanted to have a support line I could call if there was a problem and the Dell Developer Edition option has been excellent for that.

It was not easy at first. I experimented with a lot of distros (Arch is not for the faint of heart) and ended up settling on Fedora 25 at the time. I really enjoyed it for about 6 months until I had to upgrade to Fedora 26 and my machine got frozen in this weird between-upgrades state.

After that I decided to give Mint 18.3 w/ Cinnamon a try and I've been a very happy camper ever since. It's been an absolute joy to work with. Timeshift is pretty great too.

19 just hit beta and I'm looking forward to the upgrade. When I have to get on a Mac now, it feels clunky and in-the-way. I was an avid Mac user for 10+ years...even appeared as the Mac in one of those local "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads"...but I'll say it right now, it would take a job requirement to get me to go back at this point.

[megaman22]

It's insane that they don't support a 17" option still. Those machines were beasts. If I could have afforded to spend twice the money on a laptop at the time, I would have gotten one - I still probably should have with the number of HPs and Dells and Asuss I've gone through since.

[brightball]

A friend of my just replaced his motherboard to keep it going. My laptop is my 3rd screen...not having a 17" is not at option as far as I'm concerned.

[noir_lord]

I went from a 17" Dell (1600x900) to a 14" Thinkpad (2560x1440) - It mattered a lot less than I expected and the hidpi is lovely.

[brightball]

The screen size wasn't the only motivation. I like my laptop to be a portable server. This thing has 3 HD (2 NVMe & 1 SSD), up to 64GB / ram, 4 USB 3.0 ports, 1 USB-C, 1 Mini-Display/Thunderbolt, 1 HDMI, SD card slot, ethernet port, finger print scanner and a smart card slot.

Plus the battery is replaceable.

I love my beast of a laptop with all the interchangeable parts.

[noir_lord]

I understand that, I went with a T470P which is an absurdly powerful little machine, i7-7700HQ, 32GB RAM, NVMe storage, no thunderbolt but I had no need for it also has HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet port, Fingerprint reader.

Happy with it for what I paid (lot of machine for the money).

[vardump]

Does it have ECC RAM? If it does, then that system sounds very tempting. I wouldn't dare to use it for work without ECC.