When I was looking for a backup laptop in case I ran in to issues at a remote job site I got a second T420s. I can't find laptops that have monitor, power, ethernet ports on the back anymore because of the way they all hinge the screen these days. I like to have all the cables run out the back of the laptop when it is on my desk at my office or at the power station instead of taking up space on the side of the laptop where I put my mouse or notebook.
In both my T420s I have 16 GB ram and an SSD, in one I have two SSDs as there is one in the ultra-bay. The T420s could also take another SSD on the mini PCIe or M2 or whatever the interface is that the wifi module plugs in to there is a second unused slot.
I only notice myself wishing for a faster computer when I am connected to 6 PLCs, have two virtual machines running, one with citect running on a project with 9,000 tags, and have 2-3 modbus data loggers running each writing 150 tags to disk every 200ms and this data being plotted in real time all day long. But it didn't used to seem to be a problem so maybe the issue is being low on disk space or not having rebooted since March.
Actually I find the integrated graphics module is a bit less than snappy when I have two external monitors plugged in, (one is a 27" 2550x1400)
I am probably done with lenovo after 10 years of thinkpads I think they have finally turned them in to the same **** as the other manufacturers. I think they have changed the power connector so my collection of half a dozen power bricks (45W, 60W, 90W) won't be compatible with any new Lenovo machines.
people love macbooks, there is supposed to be a new one out today.
I'd also consider the microsoft surface book, I spend a lot of time writing on PDFs for drawing markups and my co-worker really likes his.