Laptop for 3 & 4

@Wixomrie  XoticPC has a reputation for good quality for lower prices than you'd pay elsewhere.  The Sager/Clevo brand is from a company that provides barebones laptops to custom build sites, which then outfit the laptop with the parts requested.  XoticPC also orders some laptops from mainstream manufacturers (e.g. MSI, Asus) and upgrades them for you.  So you're getting the same build quality in the basic laptop that you would if you bought it from Best Buy or Amazon, and then you get the extra components installed and backed up by Xotic.

XoticPC gets good reviews overall, with the usual complaints you'd see of any laptop seller.  I'm not saying they're perfect, just that I don't see any red flags, or any reason to think that you wouldn't get help if your laptop had an issue.  Of course, no matter what you buy, you should test it right away, in case something comes up.  But there's no indication I can find that Xotic's products are more likely to have issues than the products from any other company.