What kind of laptops are good these days?

[JimmySeal]

Does anyone know? I'm looking to get one pretty soon. I need a pretty powerful one for running Visual Studio, but I'd still like it to be lightweight if possible. An external optical drive might be good, since I probably won't need it all the time.

I'm not a big fan of Dell or Sony products. Can anyone recommend me something good?

 

[Haruspex]

Could you perhaps tell us a price range?

 

[JimmySeal]

Price is not incredibly important. Probably about $1000-$1500, I'd say.

 

[Haruspex]

Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Xa2528 or Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi2530 if you want a smaller screen.
From my experience, I can say that Fujitsu laptops usually have the highest specs compared to their price.
Im not sure about the rest, but those I have seen have weak batteries, of course there should be exceptions. Ofc the smaller the screen and the lower the cpu freq. is the longer it endures.