Holy PoOp My Computer Gets Hot! (Laptop Recommendations)
 

My dudes:

Most of you are sophisticated aristocrats (of some form). I seek your knowledge in the latest computer technogeeks(ies). I once built a water cooled PC and replaced it with an early 2008 Macbook Pro with the same specs, brand new back in early 2008. The laptop has been flawless to this day. I still use it. It ran Windows XcstasP flawlessly using VMWare. Well, the world is changing and now I think I need to upgrade. The Macbook Pro is solid, but I'm limited to the technology I have in the laptop (4gb 667MHz and 200GB HDD since upgrading to a SSD I want is about the cost of a new computer).

I seek to run engineering programs such as Inventor and Revit. I seek to have the mobility of a laptop. I seek an affordable and reliable computer that will last as long as my Macbook Pro has (~6 years).

Please present me with options or opinions that may fulfill my wishes.

If I had to buy a prebuilt PC, macbook pro hands down.

Seriously.

props for spelling of poup making me giggle.

Hard to beat the MacBook Pro. Are they overpriced? Sure. do they work really well and are built super solid? Yes.

HP 8570w or 8770w, depending on whether you need a 15" or 17" display.

These come with either i5 or i7 CPUs, up to 32GB of ram for the quad-core machines, NVidia Quadro or ATI FirePro (perfect for CAD), 1920x1080 panels, two drives (one mSATA SSD and one SATA HDD), and are tough as nails. None of the HP 25xx/27xx//67xx/85xx laptops we had at my previous job failed, not one, in 6 years. And we had plenty of them.

I still have a 6-year old 8510w as my machine when I go away for more than a couple of days (for less than that, I have a 2540p, which doubles as a great tuning laptop).

One computer that I am eyeing is the MSI GE70 2OE-071US . Seems to have similar specs to the new Macbook Pro 15", but for much much less.

Intel Core i7-4700MQ Processor 3.2GHz
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
12GB DDR3-1600 RAM
1TB 7,200RPM Hard Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M
Blu-ray Disc Reader
Secure Digital Card Reader
Killer E220 Game Network
802.11b/g/n Wireless
Bluetooth
17.3" Full HD Anti-Reflective Widescreen Display

MSI GE70 2OE-071US 17.3" Laptop Computer - Black/Red GE70 2OE-071US - Micro Center

Even cheaper on Amazon:

I need a new laptop as well. I'm tempted to just walk down to the Apple store and buy a Macbook because it's so easy.

Why buy the Macbook Pro over the Macbook Air?

My problem with the Macbook Air is that you can only get an 11" or 13" screen. For that, I automatically start looking at the 'base' 15" Macbook Pro for about $2k.

My problem with the Macbook Air is the floppy screen. The hinges are built weak by design. There's just not enough thickness for a proper hinge.

Realizng the limits of a laptop, I am contemplating a deal for a desktop that I found for $635:
Dell XPS 8700
i7 4770 3.4Ghz, 8M cache
8GB DDR3 1600Mhz
1TB 7200 rpm hard drive
1GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 635

Any thoughts?

That's a reasonable price on a well-spec'd machine.

my only advice is that I will never again buy a laptop with a big screen. I would rather buy a dock and monitor and just take them along for any trip where I need screen size.

I couldn't agree more with Y8s here. Unlike Enginerd, I don't consider "only" being able to get an 11" or 13" screen to be a negative. In fact, having personally owned a huge variety of laptops over the years (11" Sony Vaio, 12" Dell E4200, various machines in the 13-15" class, and my current monstrosity of a 17" Dell) I can say without any reservation at all that 11-12" is the ideal size.

Anything larger than 12" and you start to lose the ability to just pick it up and carry it with one hand like it was a book. Anything less than 11" and the keyboard becomes annoyingly small and the screen gets hard to read at a distance.

In fact, before I bought my current 12" Dell, I strongly considered getting an 11" Macbook Air. The size and lightness were perfect. The only reasons I didn't buy it were its lack of a built-in wired Ethernet port (which, in my old job, I used almost daily) and the fact that the battery was not easily removable (which is a concern when you often spend 6-12 hours at a time on one or more airplanes, and would like to be able to use your laptop for a significant portion of that time.)