being a warranty technician for dell, apple and lenovo (as well as doing a bunch of other IT related tasks as my full time job), i'm personally more inclined to go with apple/lenovo/Dell simply because if anything happens to it i can fix it myself as the warranty technician. Dell provide the best warranty out of the main manufacturers (next business day on-site service). So someone comes to your house / work and replaces the parts right there and then. Which i think is something important to think about when purchasing a laptop. However this is probably biased as I deal with broken laptops every day. Failure rates are coming down in recent times (providing you look after it). As far as something that will handle what you want to do, some basic specs I would recommend: -something with a decent resolution screen (i deployed a few latitudes the other day with a full hd screen in a 15" which was pretty dope) -core i5 quad core processor -4GB RAM (8GB would be ideal) -64 bit windows 7, so you can utilise more than 3.x GB of the ram -enough USB ports to plug all your crap into (something that is commonly overlooked when purchasing laptops). you will need one for your maschine and one for either a timecode soundcard / midi controller. so youd probably want 3+ USB ports. I'll leave you with those basic specs, go choose whichever brand you personally like, if you find a model your interested in and have any q's, post it here and i can answer anything. Hope this helps