Well, since it was just an appeal for feedback, I would say it shouldn't have been posted to Drupal Planet. But, now that there are all these amazing comments, it is certainly Drupal Planet worthy ;)

I will try to consolidate all this awesome feedback into a coherent post and then that will be fine on Drupal Planet... but there may be some multilingual Drupal posts first.

Another vote for Lenovo... they must be doing something right ;)

I returned the Toshiba as it was within the 30 day return window at Best Buy. I was impressed at how easy it was to return it, actually. I was expecting some fuss because my husband bought it and he was out of town so I didn't know if they would let me return it or not. My husband still has a Toshiba (same type I got) and does find it somewhat annoying but I think he's going to keep it since he thinks he'll get used to the quirkiness.

Thanks for the details... yes, I agree that trying them in the store is the best option for now (unless I can borrow one for a few days to really give it a workout ;) I found the trackpad on the Macbook Pro I tried in Best Buy to be fine as far as I could tell... but I was standing up and not using it in a "real life" situation. I'll go back and try some more though.

Cool, just learned about it above (see previous comments :) Thanks!

Awesome! Sounds like the Lenovo is a great machine :) I've heard this from several folks. Good to know it is so fast with the VMs... that is definitely a concern. Thanks for the details... I like the VM+git+linode syncing... I would likely do that as well.

I also ran linux as my primary desktop environment for several years. (Fedora then Ubuntu), and was a die hard Windows guy before that. I was definitely anti-Apple.

However, I recently started at a company that provided me with a MacBook pro, and I have been shocked at the smoothness of the experience. The hardware is great, the tools available for Mac just 'work better'. I run VMWare to run the actual Ubuntu drupal development environment.

Highly recommended.

There is another version of quickstart as well, that runs ubuntu 12.04 called drupalpro, it has some extra things that quickstart doesn't have as more recent development has gone into it, but it uses the unity desktop.

Here are some I found:

System 76: https://www.system76.com

Ohava: http://www.ohava.com/

Zareason: http://zareason.com

and more at:

https://linuxpreloaded.com/

Running the VMs from an external SSD sounds interesting... hadn't even thought of that as an option. I guess there are pros and cons to that but certainly worth thinking about :)

I know Mac users who love their SSD for fast boot times... definitely worth considering as well.

I agree that Macs are expensive... though the people I know who have "converted" from Windows to Mac are all very happy and never want to go back... why is that? I never hear of people going the other way (Mac => Windows). Once you drink the Koolaid, then you are hooked for life, I guess ;) I guess this is actually one reason I am hesitant to get a Mac!

You make some good points, thanks!

I'm only recently finding that their are vendors who specifically sell Linux laptops. I haven't done research on them so don't know if this is a good way to go or not. Any vendors you suggest?

I've heard that Lenovo makes good laptops. The Best Buy geek squad guys also recommended Samsung and Asus. I've read that Asus has good reliability but I don't know much about Lenovo and Samsung for laptops.

I agree that Macs are pricey. If they were the same price as a PC, then I guess I'd have one already... ??

I must admit, though, when typing on the one at Best Buy tonight, the keyboard felt pretty darn nice. I don't know why, but it did.

But, I am worried about the vendor lock-in and the hardware not being supported down the road. That is a very valid point and something to strongly consider.

The only way I'd consider staying on Linux for my main OS at this point would be to get a laptop from a Linux laptop vendor (due to the touchpad driver issues mentioned in my post). If the touchpad had been working well in Linux on the new Dell or new Toshiba, I wouldn't have been looking at possibly going to Windows or Mac. I would imagine that the Linux laptop vendors have sorted this out (how, I don't know... their own drivers?). But, I imagine the vendors are all online and I wouldn't be able to go down to a store and try it out. I'll have to do some research on that.

I used F-Spot for photos on my old Dell laptop. I'd like a better way to tag photos and share them with Picasa and Flickr with the tags.

I like Gimp and Inkscape okay. I've used Photoshop and Illustrator in the past. I only do photo processing and graphics stuff occasionally now but would like to do it more.

As for Open/Libre Office vs MS Office, I have another comment above about that... agree that the free versions are fine for basic stuff.

I had not heard of Pencil... I'll check it out.

Note that part of my quest is to have tools that are highly compatible with my new business partner's tools and she's on Mac and uses MS Office.

It's funny that you said:

...I haven't looked back ever since.

as that is the exact phase used at the Santa Cruz Drupal user group meeting tonight by someone who switched from Windows to Mac. :)

I did try out the Mac keyboard at Best Buy after I returned the Toshiba and, I must say, that the keyboard felt very nice. Also, the touchpad didn't seem to be bothered when my hand was touching it while typing.

I did try the "right click" at the user group meeting (using 2 fingers) and that didn't work very well for me... but I guess you just have to train yourself for some of it.

Hmmm....