Buying a new laptop to day to move away from the high end workstation we've been using.

What is the best config for inkscape?  Buying a Dell as always.  I7 ok or need to Xeon?  16 or 32 GB main memory?  Do graphics cards make a difference or do all calcs still go CPU only?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I don't think there are any official hardware requirements for Inkscape. There was some discussion on this a while back in this topic. In my own, entirely subjective, experience, get as much RAM as you can. Personally, I'd take double the RAM over a slightly faster processor every time. But... perhaps you need to ask... what else will you be using the laptop for besides Inkscape, as it will run well on any modern hardware.

Don't bother too much about the specs of your system. Unless you have very specific requirements all modern hardware will be able to run Inkscape with reasonable speed.

A fast CPU does help a bit. A CPU with fast single-core performance will help you more than many cores (most of Inkscape is single-threaded).

16 GB will be more than sufficient for Inkscape but obviously depends on what other applications you will be running in parallel.

GPU acceleration is currently not available in Inkscape.

Thanks for the thoughts.  Based on the lack of GPU support, more memory and faster processor make sense.  The system also runs the post processor for CNC called Sheetcam.  Other than that just running MS Office suite and adobe apps.