I had a job in 2009 where my boss promised me a $1000 bonus if I worked longer hours through Christmas holiday time in order to complete a Flash animation for his company's homepage. I decided to take that and buy a laptop. My choice may be considered a silly gamble but Instead of buying new I decided to max out that money and scour Craigslist for the "dream deal". Of all the models in the world I was able to find a fully upgraded Music XPC M-7. This computer is a specially tuned music production desktop replacement based on the Clevo D900C. Brand new and with the grahpics card upgrade (Nvidia 8700m GT) it's sticker price was about $5000. I've since developed countless websites, taken it overseas, played through all the Call of Duty's, typed millions of words, etc. etc. and am typing this comment on the thing (no idea why I'm wasting time here, just procrastinating). I can't say enough about this computer. It's so frigging great. It's about 5 years old and still scores a 6.4 in the Windows 7 rating thingy. I know the price is way more than a MBP but man, you're never going to see anyone budge on the MBP price even on Craigslist. People are still asking 90%+ of new. It's ridiculous. My advice is to get on Craigslist every day until you hit a deal in which the seller really doesn't care to get a fair price and the machine they're selling is lesser known and kick ass. It'll take a while, but it's worth it.
