My Macbook Pro 17″ is about 3+ years old and I had great anticipation for WWDC today.  Boy was I disappointed!  No more 17″ Macbook Pro!  17″ is a must for me and their graphics card (as usual) is middle of the road.  The big thing is the Retina display, but you may not be able to see a difference.  I’m actually kind of really pissed off.  So much so, it may be time to ditch Apple.  The only things that may keep me are:

  • High quality product and high quality support.  Apple is 2nd to none in both of those categories (at least in my experience).  I’m willing to pay big bucks for both of these things if they are a reality.
  • Commercial Unix.  The High quality product/support combined with  a unix-based laptop.
  • No-thought/knowledge-required Windows dual-boot (Bootcamp).
  • The awesome touchpad
  • Automatic iphone sync/backup

I’m looking for a gaming laptop alternative, please offer recommendations!

If I have to go back to Windblows, its got to be with a kick-ass gaming laptop.  I took this route back in 2006 and purchased an Alienware beast of a laptop.  I returned the initial shipment because it was not assembled correctly (hard drive wasn’t fully connected) and just broken in general as well.  Got a replacement, but that died in less than 1 year.  I tried to get help from Alienware to fix it (my warranty was still valid), but gave up after 1-2 weeks of getting the run-around from their support.  Bought a Macbook and have been happy every since, until today…Before 2006 it was also an endless string of crappy Dell notebooks.

Can anybody recommend a kick-ass 17″+ gaming notebook that they have bought in the past year that wasn’t broken when you got it and doesn’t have horrible support and is decent quality?  Maybe Alienware has improved?  Asus? Hp Envy?  Its hard to tell who is a good company and who isn’t when dealing with these high-end laptops.  I’ve spent a few hours searching and reading, but can’t really get anything definitive on quality of product/support.