Curious as to what the "new hotness" is for development. What laptop/computer do you have and love/want to have, which OS, and which IDE/text editor?
I love my Thinkpad X1 Carbon with Arch Linux. I think I have a pretty optimized work environment thanks to the following software: Emacs (Editor, Email, IRC, Org-mode), XMonad (Window manager) and Conkeror (Browser).<p>You can find all my dotfiles online: <a href="https://github.com/wunki/wunki-dotfiles" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/wunki/wunki-dotfiles</a>
Most developers you see around will be using OSX. It just works and many UNIX apps have nice GUI wrappers/installers. You can pickup the older 17inch MacBook Pro off eBay which are fantastic, cheap developer machines. Plus if you are doing any web development then at some point you will need Photoshop/Illustrator.<p>As for IDE I personally use Sublime or Vim.
Thinkpad T430S, running Ubuntu 12.04. I use emacs for the most part and focus on django development.<p>I had been reading mixed reviews about Thinkpads for a long time, but finally jumped in and bought one. It's easily the best computer I've ever owned, and it makes me want to work. I love the keyboard, the display is exactly what I need, it's easy to carry around.<p>If you go with a Thinkpad, buy the bare model that you want from Lenovo and then buy upgrades from crucial.com or another supplier; it's much cheaper than building the machine you want on Lenovo. I replaced the dvd with a bay battery, and happily get enough battery life.
Anything cheap from Asus or hp.<p>Debian. Check online if the model you want run Linux fine.<p>Vim and then a bunch of scripts to suit your project. Build. Collaboration. Etc.
11" Macbook air for hacking while traveling, at cafes, in the sofa etc. HP Mobile Workstation 8570 running Windows 7 (but honestly wish I had Windows 8) for when I need more power and to run all the Windows only applications I need. I run Crunchbang Linux in a VM on both laptops. For text editing I use PyCharm for python, Webstorm for javascript and sublime for everything else.
I would like to add a different perspective. I used to work on a Thinkpad, and loved the machine. Last year I changed to a MacBook Air (MBA). I also like this machine. But one of the biggest changes was that people seemed to be much more easily convinced when I showed them results on the MBA. This is a major point to consider IMHO.
I picked up a slightly used Thinkpad x220 on craigslist for $500 about 1.5 years ago. Running Arch Linux + Vim.<p>To be honest, I'm very tempted to switch to a Macbook Air/Pro for iOS development (I prefer to own just one laptop)
Those using Linux on your laptop is the sleep, suspend, and hibernate functions working? That's my number one reason I have kept on using Mac OS X. The other being iOS development.