I'm wanting to get a high performance (but not primarily a gaming) laptop. I don't much care about "age" (e.g. Ivy tech will do), as long as it meets the other criteria. Oh, AMD is out and NVIDIA is in for this one - I'm running Ubuntu, and have had way too much trouble with AMD.
To be clear, I'm running a gaming 17" now for my work, since it was the only thing meeting my spec at the time. I suspect it will be the same again, but hopefully I can cut back a bit on the GPU side (save a few $$)

So, on to the priorities...

1. 17” 

1. 1920x1080

1. i7

1. 4 Ram slots

1. Optimus Graphics / Battery life > 2hr, pref 3++

1. Number pad

1. Good sound

1. Bright - I know windows auto-dims on battery, so I'm asking about linux. If I'm outside, I don't care about battery life - I care that I can use it if I want to.

Asus seemingly out due to rubbish sound - subwoofers make them worse it seems
MSI out because of stupid single fan cooling on their GT70 (“super” gaming) models.

So what other brands/options would you guys recommend? It's taken me hours to just get this far...