Which Laptop Should I Buy?

Your budget will dictate what laptop you can buy, which you have not told us....

That's going to be quite a pricey laptop. My personal recommendation is:

I7 CPU, 8G Ram or more, dedicated Nvidia Video card 650m or better. dual drives, SSD for system and 1TByte data drive. As far as brands, I have found good and bad in all brand names. Over the last 20 years Toshiba has been my overall favorite, while Dell business class comps are also very reliable. But I haven't personally used any with the power you need based on the apps you listed. Lenovo are also well respected, (used to IBM). Remember cooling is everything for component life and performance and packing that kind of power into a laptop means additional cooling will be a must. If you are going to be using this comp on the battery often, cry once and buy the 9cell extra power battery right up front. The standard battery will rarely give even one hour of operational time when gaming or using other power hungry apps. I have not listed any specific models since people are quite different in their persoanl preferences. For autocad I would like at least a 17" screen but others don't want to lug so large a laptop around. Some use touchpads while other folks want a mouse or pen tablet. So I leave all the personal user requirements up to you.

With that specification, anything would do.

First off, you need to look at the software developer's minimum performance characteristics/requirements for each and every software platform, and go beyond them!

Many of the newer design and drafting platforms these days require the computer to at least run 64-bit. Also, I suggest that you run at least 8 GB of RAM as a minimum. A very good and fast 4-core processor is essential, as well as 2-mega TB hard drives and accompanying backup software (such as Acronis, etc etc).

I believe you'd be better off served with a ground-up built desktop PC rather than a laptop. Talk to a seasoned computer Tekkie about what you really need and can afford. Going with a laptop that needs to run efficiently and fast is also going to make it a very very expensive machine!!!