I recently switched to a ThinkPad W530 laptop. It is a fairly recent machine with the following hardware config:
- Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3720QM CPU @ 2.60GHz
- 8 GiB RAM
- nVIDIA Optimus
- Samsung SSD Drive
On the software front, I decided to take my chances. Hence:
- BTRFS File System
- SystemD Init
The rest is in the video. It is impressive to see how drastically the experience has changed with this combination.
From my limited time spent exploring the machine, all credit goes to the SSD technology.