Looking for 17 inch light gaming/work laptop, ~$1500

[TonyG]

My boss in after a new laptop and knowing him, he will need it to last 5-6 years, or longer if he can get by with it.

So, budget is around the $1500 range, but can fluctuate some as needed. He will be doing graphics and audio work with it, so I am thinking something along the lines of a gaming laptop should work for him, but am definitely open to suggestions

17 inch, good quality screen, touch not required
I7, 6th generation processor
16gb+ ram
250gb ssd plus 1tb hdd, or just a 1tb ssd?
graphics card of decent quality, 960m or better, not locked into any particular one
internal optical drive, as we are stuck burning things to CD's still
battery life isn't real concerning, as it will be plugged in most of the time

He is currently looking at a Lenovo Y700 on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-17-3-I...bin:2289792011,p_n_size_browse-bin:7817234011
Thank you for any advice that you might have to offer, as I am really not up on whats current, and what would be best. Also, I am not asking anyone to spend the time sourcing out the perfect laptop, just looking for suggestions if you have already been looking at something similiar.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Well you can get a Sager NP7270 which has a 17.3" IPS 1080p, i7-6700HQ, Nvidia 960m, 16GB DDR3 RAM, Samsung 950Pro 256GB M.2 + 1TB 7200RPM HDD, DVDRW/CDRW, Win10 64bit Home for ~$1270 (check sager sellers such as xoticpc, sager, or others).

If you are doing a lot of graphics work you might need a more powerful GPU, higher resolution screen, or more powerful CPU. Unfortunately all those things will cost you and will probably blow the $1500 budget (more like $1800-2200).

Is there any reason why this is to be a laptop and not a desktop as the desktop would have both more powerful CPU, graphics cards, as well as better quality screens designed specifically for professional graphics work (i.e. Adobe/RGB color gamut correctness, proper calibration for white/gray/black levels, etc., all of which are needed when dealing with graphics work so that the end deliverable is correct) and would also be cheaper than a similar spec'ed laptop.