Dell New Precision 5520 vs MacBook Pro

Ok - so I'm zeroing in on my laptop purchase here. At this point I feel that the Dell New Precision 5520 w/ Ubuntu is on equal footing hardware wise as MacBook Pro.

I am seeking virtualization advice on Ubuntu. I've used virtual box on Ubuntu before, and this will be for professional purposes so I'd like to avoid VMWare at all costs here.

I'm not familiar with KVM, docker, etc so if you have any advice I'd appreciate.

I'm trying to make the exact same decision myself. Raw hardware, I'd say the 5520 is ahead of the current MacBook Pros. Although, I'm willing to wait until the 2017 MacBooks come out. The 32GB of RAM available in the 5520 would make a world of a difference if your running multiple VMs.

Opinion: If your spinning up test servers and the like I'd say docker is the way to go. KVM isn't too hard to use, but I wouldn't want to use it for smallish VMs I'm going to constantly be altering. The nice thing about docker is that it's mobile, so you can be relatively sure that the project will work exactly the same on production as it does locally (assuming your using docker containers in prod). If your development environment is running in a VM, you can run into the classic works on my machine problems.

If you decide to get the 5520, please post your experience with it. I'm eagerly waiting for some reviews of it out in the wild.

EDIT: spelling

What about vagrant? Is it something to consider?

I can't do the new macbook after I saw they got rid of the escape key and replaced into with some light bar.

I use vi - that ain't gon work fo me.

I would hunt for a good deal on the last generation 15 inch macbook pro.

I absolutely loved that machine. Worked great with opensuse and had very respectable battery life.