Originally Posted by PTravel

I'm changing jobs and it's probably a good time to change laptops. This is what I'm looking for:

Quad core (AMD or Intel is fine)
USB 3.0 ports
Gigabit NIC
802.11 g/n WiFi
Full dock available as an accessory
Hard drive size doesn't matter, but I'll want to drop in an SSD
Stock memory doesn't matter, but I'll want to drop in 8 gig
HDMI would be nice
BlueTooth
Display at least 1366 x 768

Weight isn't critical, size isn't critical, i.e. I'm not looking for an ultra book
Decent battery life is desireable
I'd prefer Win7 to Win8
Audio doesn't matter -- I'll use headphones or an outboard USB sound card.
CD/DVD/BluRay drive doesn't matter -- I have a portable CD/DVD burner BluRay reader that I can if I need it.

This will be an office desktop replacement, but I'll also be using it for a variety of tasks, from recording audio on location, to editing in Photoshop and Premiere, to writing music with Finale, to watching my Slingbox in airports.

Now the kicker: I need to spend as little as possible.

I've had a number of Vaio laptops, but I find that they're not particularly rugged and tend to be WAY to pricey. I've got an HP dual-core now, and it does pretty well, but the HPs I've seen don't have full docking stations -- they use USB docks, which won't work for me because, in the office, I use dual monitors.

Any suggestions?