I am typing this on a 3 year old Dell E6520 running Arch Linux, paid $900 for i7-2720QM, 8GB RAM, and 240GB drive back in 2011, spent another $250 for two 128GB SSD's and 16GB RAM, total of $1150. It came with 3 year Dell business warranty + 1 year extra warranty for using Amex/Discover card. The battery life was about 7 hours initially with 9 cell battery, but I bet latest gen haswell can give 8 hours with much smaller battery.

I would suggest to check out E6540 in Dell outlet, they have 20% to 30% coupons frequently http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/InventorySea....

This is coming from somebody who also has a 2014 Retina Macbook Pro, absolutely don't care for it, I keep it closed in the corner of the room and do remote desktop when I need something Mac specific.