For what it's worth, I have been using cheap-o refurbished HP Elitebooks (the 830) off of eBay running Fedora and they are great. I have been running my old one for years and years and the new one for about a year or so.
Battery life erodes over time but a new battery will fix it right up.
It depends what kind of development you're doing, of course. I am not sure what intensive computer usage means to you, but I would say I use it intensively! But I am not doing anything that requires a GPU nor am I re-compiling kernels every day. But for my humble needs I've found it's a cost-effective solution that holds up quite well.
Battery life erodes over time but a new battery will fix it right up.
It depends what kind of development you're doing, of course. I am not sure what intensive computer usage means to you, but I would say I use it intensively! But I am not doing anything that requires a GPU nor am I re-compiling kernels every day. But for my humble needs I've found it's a cost-effective solution that holds up quite well.