ditto, software always develops in relationship with 'benchmark' machines. My macbook is doing a sterling job at the moment, but it has its limitations - my os is about 2 years out of date and this means viat i can,t upgrade to latest software etc. That said, i'm a musician and composer first, so the hear should be there to serve me and not the other way round. Yes, it's nice to have shiny new toys and plugins but at some point yot have to put 'pen to paper' so to speak. I don't mine running outdated kit to get my stuff together, i know it inside out and i know that if i upgraded then my productivity would suffer.