So a friend of a friend needs laptop advice!

This friend of a friend has a budget of 4,000 Malaysian ringgit which equates to about 1,300 US dollars. He wants a laptop for portability and is stuck between an Alienware M14x or a 13" Apple, both of which are around the same price. He doesn't game anymore, but will be using "Oracle 11g Visual Studio 2005 2008 2010, Netbeans, JCreator and other such programming software." What is he to do?

"yah i need em all... photoshop flash SQL Server, exchange server, i will need a Virtual machine run other windows, i would also need windows server 2008"

Tell him to get an ultrabook.

Just about any laptop off the shelf can do those things. If that's his price range, I recommend a Lenovo laptop. They're slim, have the best quality around and have tons of features. Even my outdated x61t has a finger scanner.

They're perfect if you're trying to get serious work done.