Contemplating a new edit setup and looking for input.

First, it must be laptop. No option there, period. Full time traveller.

Second, I'm on a mac now so I really dont think I want to switch to pc.

Third, I currently use 3 external drives. One for raw footage, one for stock material like templates, music, graphics, etc and one for scratch disc. The new macs only have 2 usb ports...so, scratch disc on the laptop drive?

MBP 15s have 3 processor choices; 2.2 ghz, 2.5 ghz and 2.8ghz. Seems the 2.8 are special order. How bad do I need 2.8?

What else do I need to consider?

I'm in same boat. I have a day job and also travel for work a good bit. I recently gave my 3 year old Dell XPS15 to my wife since she got her realtor license and is now needing something mobile to do work on.

I've found that the newer gaming laptops meet the bill for a affordable mobile editing station vs, say a dedicated true mobile workstation from Dell or HP.

On the PC side for around $2500 you can get monster dual hard drive machines from MSI, ASUS, and Alienware.

i7
32 GB RAM
256GB or 512 GB SSD
1 TB storage HD
GTX1070 video card
15.6' 4K screen

On the Mac side, much more limited for mobile workstations.

I fear a switch to pc will be problematic with my legacy projects.

You need to watch the apple event today and see if the new MacBook Pros have enough grunt. Barefeats.com will probably have comparisons when they are released to show actual benefit of higher clock speeds for typical creative tasks.

http://forums.adobe.com/community/premiere/hardware_forum?view=discussions