@Alan_Kreyger, @David_Kingham, @Hank_Pennington, @David_Schoen, @kirk Thanks for all the great feedback and new ideas. The Lenovo 730 appears to be a good product, from your personal experience as well as from Trusted Reviews. It was #11 on their Best Laptops 2019 list. They consider it a second best to the Dell XPS.
I like the idea of a used Mac, too, and will look into that. It’s been about 15 years since I had a Mac and I recall how much I enjoyed it then. On the conversation of Why did you choose a Mac over a PC? split off from this one, I especially appreciated @David_Kingham’s comments on why he prefers the Mac. Just what I needed to hear. I rarely read such adetailed explanation for why anyone prefers Mac.
I, too, use a stand-alone monitor for editing so that comment seems to characterize many of us.
The Lenovo I’m considering is also “Open Box” for about 10% less. I’m willing to get lower RAM and hard drive space because I’m going to upgrade both for less than the model that includes them, plus I run my laptop off a G-Tech G Drive 4 TB external for primary storage, so the laptop’s capacity isn’t a primary need.
I’m also buying at Best Buy, but I’m curious where others buy. I’ll start a new conversation about that.