SQL Server query on server taking longer than laptop
We had an issue with a select statement using like '%findthis%' was causing slowness issues. One server it'd run fast whereas the other server would be quite slow. We were able to remove one of the % signs to '%findthis' allowing the optimizer to correctly interpret the query--on both servers yielding similar performance results. (%findthis% is simply bad form, but it wasn't our code to change unfortunately).

Long story short, make sure your SQL Server versions are identical. For example, run select @@version and look at the numeric sequences like 10.50.6000.34.

Our versions were almost identical but our test server was running faster than production because it was running a trace flag--and a minor patch. The next patch for SQL Server would have included the flag so I'm told. 

Run DBCC TRACESTATUS(-1) on both servers to make sure they're running the same trace flags as well. I forget which trace flag was running in test that made it faster, but the newest patch to production SQL would have enabled it. It's been a while and most people are out for the holidays, or I'd have more specifics on which flag and which patch.