[GMAdan]

Well when i had the same problem i went to the safe side. I wanted mostly to run Inventor and not have to worry how many parts are in the assembly. So what i looked for the ISV certified label. So i went with the Dell M90 mobile workstation. It runs inventor 11, Solidworks, and 3dmax with no problems. But they do come with a hefty price tag. I got mine from their outlet and it runs like new and it cost me 1,500. I think that is a good price for 17'' screen with Intel core 2 duo, 80gb HD, 1gb ram, and Nvida 256mb QuadroFX graphics card.

but if you are looking into apple products i would look at the Pro books if you want to run inventor and the other programs on it. but I think the mac books would work fine as long as you have the 2 gb of ram