[jyl]

Wife needs a new notebook. Buying her a refurb'd MacBook Pro 13", current version w/o Retina display and w/ optical drive. Will stick in 8 GB RAM and 128GB SSD. Total cost about $1200. You can do the same, w/ the 15".

I have a succession of PC notebooks for work. The only ones I've loved have been the Thinkpads, those are great machines. The HP's have been really disappointing - terrible reliability. My company bought a few hundred HP notebooks a few years ago. Every single one, in my office, died - typically hard drive failure. Talking to IT, they said most of the HPs crashed. I was on my third. Real fun to be sitting in a hotel at 4 PM talking to IT who is trying to get a new laptop built and over-nighted to you. Now we have Dells. Seem like decent machines but the battery life is worse than the HPs. I'm thinking about going rogue with a self-bought MacBook Air or Thinkpad.