[quotemsg=18607559,0,1315350]If I were to buy a laptop for development, I would get one with a 4 core, 8 thread i7, 16GB ram, some modest nvidia gpu, and a 256gb ssd. Unfortunately, no one pairs such a combo is an inexpensive chassis with a 1080p screen. Plastic chassis? Fine by me![/quotemsg]Well, I don't really follow the laptop market, but it seems there were systems which approximated your updated spec in the not-so-distant past.
The i7-2760QM was a 4-core, 8-thread Sandybridge with 2.4/3.5 GHz Base/Turbo clock. Dell used them in some of their Latitude models. Here's a refurb:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834295776
I don't know if the RAM is upgradable to 16 GB, and you'd definitely have to swap out the HDD for a SSD. I wonder how heavy they were & what res the screen is. Actually kinda tempting, even when you factor in the upgrades.
Then again, the TDP on that CPU is 45 W.
According to ark.intel.com, here are your options, if you want 4c/8t in a mobile CPU under 40 W:
Code:
CPU Turbo TDP
-------------------------
i7-3612QM 3.10 GHz 35 W
i7-3632QM 3.20 GHz 35 W
i7-4702MQ 3.20 GHz 37 W
i7-4702HQ 3.20 GHz 37 W
i7-4712MQ 3.30 GHz 37 W
i7-4712HQ 3.30 GHz 37 W
i7-4722HQ 3.40 GHz 37 W
Even if you drop the thread requirement, it seems there are no quad-cores below that (until you get down to Atom cores).
The list gets much bigger, if you raise the TDP to 45 or higher, but that puts you well into the mobile workstation segment. Even 37 W seems much higher than you'd be able to use on battery. And when you plug it in, it might be hard to find laptops that can dissipate 37 W without sounding like a hairdrier.