With my MBP I used the official apple dongle when running VMware. When I finally moved to boot camp the apple dongle wouldn't work so I bought a startech. I carry both because i cant get either one to work on/under the other OS.

I have a 2013 MBP that just won't die. Had an under warranty major repair about a year ago. Main board went so they replaced that and the battery and HD while under the hood. I think it was $3500. Previous laptop was a Lenovo that was apx $4500. Both were totally maxed out top of the line.

I got 5 years out of the Lenovo. During those 5 years I did an SSD replacement for the original HD. That Lenovo never felt slow or sluggish. The only reason I stopped using it was that I was on Long island and the motherboard died. I had to do a bunch of UI work so I had to buy a new computer immediately. I thought about buying a cheap temp laptop and getting the Lenovo fixed but that seemed like a waste of money so I bought the MBP at the Apple store nearby.

The MBP was slow at first (compared to the Lenovo but still faster than cheap laptops)until I installed Windows with boot camp. Since then it has been stable and fast.

Using these maxed out laptops in the field changes your life. It's like having a propper vehicle or termination and testing gear. If you don't do a lot of laptop work then anything will probably work fine. If you spend 4 out of 8 hours + every day on your PC then it's worth the $50-75 a month it costs to have desktop/gaming PC power that fits in your backpack.

It really depends on what your role is. I don't have festool organizers because I don't do the in and out hang and bang stuff. I usually drop equipment off at a project and leave it on site for weeks or months or I just grab my tiny parts bag for service calls. I do however have an expensive powerful laptop because it's common for me to be running multiple demanding applications while sitting in a customer's basement.