(which is slightly more expensive btw)
Fella getting a new (Icelandic) pied-à-terre

Looks like it'll hold its value just fine.
Er (sheepishly) I actually have one of those in Iceland. Made of wood and not much bigger than that, but in a little better state of repair. Iceland is a rather amazing place. I can't recommend it enough. Skál!
And, I add, recording a 50-track session with several plugins inserted isn't even a task I would trust to a laptop, unless it was just a fun thing. 50 channels of Apogee and you don't have a dedicated desktop machine? Come on.
By the way, do you need all those plugins just to track? How about the latency?
Agreed, you never use plugins to record, only to mix. If you record with them, you can't undo it. Plug-ins are purely for the mix / post-production.
And if the pre-amp/ mics are good, a laptop is perfectly fine for tracking excellent audio, I would not think twice - the data rate is minimal. The room is far more important than the computer it's tracked on. As for 96K? Why bother? It makes it way more cumbersome (at least 4 times the file size), but IMHO is pointless since no one can hear the difference. Except maybe dogs.