I agree with the sager 8150 suggestion. Malibal is good, they've got a good reputation over at
notebookreivew.com but lately some stuff has come up about them getting machines from a company called Eurocom which is a no no.
Eurocom is evil lol.. Doesn't tarnish their service and customer approval rating, but it doesn't shed a good light as they swore up and down that they didn't..
I'd say check out
Xotic PC over
Malibal. My personal preference is
Mythlogic, they're a smaller shop, but they build their laptops from shells from Clevo whereas Xotic or Malibal order the systems mostly prebuilt from Sager and just add some of their own components. they charge a bit more, but if you're nice to them, they'll hook you up. They even do custom paintings a decals now. I ordered a LOADED 8150 last year (read: $3400) and ended up getting it for $2600. That was a one time thing though as I became fairly good friends with the co-owner, and I have a way with words
I sadly had to return it due to money isses, but it was awesome. It's quite solid, i'd give the keyboard a 6.5/10 and the trackpad a 4/10 though.
BTW, Xotic and Malibal both give discounts to Notebook Review members. You have to have like 5 or 10 posts first though.
When are you deploying? The new stuff is due out in a few months.. Currently they don't have a way to switch from the dedicated GPU to the internal one one their high end systems which means you're looking at 2-3hrs of battery life max. Some people have done pretty well undervolting/clocking their gpu's to get a longer battery life though.
The refresh is due this summer with Ivy Bridge processors and some very nice gpu's from Nvidia. They'll have graphics switching and they're adding backlit keyboards for the first time. That'll potentially double the battery life.
I highly recommend a Solid State Drive. No moving parts so if it gets bumped around while you're out saving the world somewhere, the contents of the drive will be safe. Plus it uses a lot less power = more battery life. And it's a zillion times faster than a standard hard drive. once you have one, you'll wonder how you got along without one lol
I might not be up on all the audio stuff yet, but Sager's are one area I'm well versed in
Check out these video reviews from Xotic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1Kzwu_Hcqs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI9gHw8Jpt0&feature=related
My 8150 had those specs except I had the i7 2720 processor, a SSD, and the upgraded 95% gamut matte screen which was absolutely gorgeous btw.
