A good laptop for Java development?

I don't have the interest or time to worry about tweaking device drivers to get Ubuntu to work perfectly. I'd be willing to let an OEM like System76 handle this for me. Here's an article from zdnet reviewing one of System76's Pangolin Performance laptops. I suppose a Core i5 would be sufficient for the reasonable Java coding utilizing Eclipse I plan to do. I use the word "reasonable" because I don't need a billion VMs open. Is an i7 really necessary? The base RAM (2GB) and hard drive (5400 RPM) would need upgrades though. StackOverflow has a nice discussion by some more experienced folks than me about this very issue.