What else do you plan to do with it? Will you be doing anything with photographs? Playing any games?
For most people in i5 processor is fine. You really only need the i7 if you are doing gaming or needing a great deal of computational power. I don't know if anything you are doing would require an i7.
For a notebook I would personally only get one with a Haswell processor (Intel 4th generaration) because it handles power requirements better. Some manufacturers are currently selling out their old 3rd generation processors but I just don't think it is worth it for a notebook.
I personally have a notebook on order right now:
Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro: Laptop Tablet Hybrid - Multimode Ultrabook Laptop | Lenovo (US)
Not suggesting this for you since you said you didn't want touch (or rather don't care about it). I am buying it because I did want touch, and I like the ability to set it up to watch media by using stand mode and I could also use it as a tablet. There are others that do that but I really wanted the QHD+ display. Which brings up the issue of screen resolution you want. This is largely a matter of personal preference. My suggestion is to get over to a Best Buy and look at their notebooks and see how a screen looks different at various resolution. BB should have in stock the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro so you can see how a QHD+ display looks. That is the highest resolution currently offered I think (but not totally sure). On the other hand, some people don't care at all. I personally probably wouldn't go below 1920x1080 but resolution is important to me.
If you aren't into gaming then it probably doesn't matter to you whether you have a dedicated video card or not.
I second the suggestion of an SSD drive. I have an SSD drive and love it. That said, if this will be your primary computer then only get one that has either a 512GB SSD drive or has room for 2 SSD drives or an SSD and a HD.
I bought my newest notebook direct from Lenovo, but in the past have had success really customizing a notebook at xoticpc. They have a lot of gaming notebooks but plenty of "regular" notebooks as well. What is like is that you can really customize what you want.
Screen size really depends on what you will be doing on it and how you feel like lugging around a big notebook. My Lenovo with a 13" screen is replacing my Sager (from xoticpc) with a 17" screen. I found that I hated, hated, hated lugging around that monster. I hated the no batter life, I hated the heaviness of it and just dreaded having to use it. So I converted it to be a spare desktop for the house and am buying a 13". I once had an 11" and it was a bit of challenge to use on spreadsheets. For work I found that a 14" was fine. 15" is OK but starting to get a little large.
Again, it may depend on how you plan to use it.
Also, is it important to you to have in home warranty service? Most notebooks don't have that available. Two that do are Dell and Lenovo.
Also check out whatever you consider at:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/
The forums are very good and you can often find out about coupons that may not be obvious. My Lenovo cost me $300 less than what is on the Lenovo page because of a coupon I found out about on the Lenovo forum.