Mobile Workstations

[patagoniadave]

Hi guys, looks like in the near future I will be splitting my time evenly between "consulting" at my friends firm, working from home, and attending some graphics courses. I am going to be buying a screaming top of the line machine, and was thinking how nice it would be to just tote it along, and plug into available monitors. I know there is a hardware style of computer that supports this, mostly for network gaming parties. I don't know much about the machines though. Is there anything besides a smaller box that sets them apart? Anyone looked into this? And before anyone suggests it, I have thought about a laptop, and think I can get more bang for my buck with a pc. Thanks for any input.

[Wes Macaulay]

I've got a company that builds a screaming P4 (non-mobile processor) 533 Mhx front side bus everything-flies laptop for about $2100 US. DVD, 15" high-res screen. The small form factor computers (like ShuttleX) are cool, but the laptop is still king for mobile workstation tasks.

These guys purposely build laptops with desktop parts so you get performance, not battery life, but that's what we want anyway!

[hand471037]

All of the 'gaming' lan party style cases aren't special, they are just small mini-towers in a 'caddy'.

Like this:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/bags/37dc/

There are 'mini-pc' cases that allow for very small pc's:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/handhelds/5fd7/

But your best bet would probably be a laptop that is more PC than portable. There's metanoia's friend, and there are also companies like AlienWare that make high-end graphic laptops for video/gaming:
http://www.alienware.com/system_pages/area-51m.aspx

Also there are rumors that Apple might put it's new G5 chip into it's next generation laptops, making a laptop that will be much faster than a high-end dual-p4 with lots of battery life to boot! But since the applications you use probably don't run on Mac, this is moot. :)

[patagoniadave]

You know, when I was playing around with premierelast year, Alien Ware kept coming up in the forum discussions. Everyone seems to like them. I guess I am just worried that I will not get the same machine for the same price if I go laptop. I don't really need a laptop, I won't be using it out in the field, or on planes, or things like that. I am just going to have two spaces that I will be predominantly working in, and I hate going back and forth between two machines.

[christopher.zoog51272]

I use a shuttle XPC SN41G2 as my home pc and it rocks. i have an ahtlon 2000+ but it takes up xp 2800+

check it out: http://us.shuttle.com/specs2.asp?pro_id=284

i love my little shoebox computer 8)

[patagoniadave]

i love my little shoebox computer 8)

He is very cute (or is it a she?) :lol: The more I look, the harder it is becoming for me to decide on a machine. Anyone want to blow about 3 grand for me so I can blame someone else if I don't like it?

[Steve_Stafford]

Send the money to...

[hand471037]

Hey Zoog, check this out:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/handhelds/5fd7/

It's not AMD; which is bad, but it is P4. It's like the shuttle, but with a handle!

Also, do you have cooling problems with that shuttle & AMD? My dual AMD tower at home sounds like a damn airplane because of all it's fans- those AMD's pump a ton of heat!

[Brian]

Tom's Hardware put together a review of 4 mini-PC systems this month including the Shuttle system mentioned earlier that is worth taking a look at.

Here's the link: http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20030722/index.html

Regards,

Brian

[christopher.zoog51272]

Hey Zoog, check this out:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/handhelds/5fd7/

It's not AMD; which is bad, but it is P4. It's like the shuttle, but with a handle!

Also, do you have cooling problems with that shuttle & AMD? My dual AMD tower at home sounds like a damn airplane because of all it's fans- those AMD's pump a ton of heat!

cool, i love the carbon fiber handle.

About the heat, well i put this thing through the ringer. I also have a prototype hauppauge win-tv PVR 350 card (on board mpeg2 encoder chip) to record and pause live tv, stuffed in the pci slot, and a ATI Radeon 9000 pro 128 mb in the 8x AGP slot!!!! Plus I live in a house with no A/C so it's get put through a torture test, and so far so good :D No prblem with lock ups or anything. The ICE heatpipe technology really works.

[PeterJ]

The box you describe is a monster Jeffrey, it is fully 8 x 7 x 11.7 in your inches while this baby (http://www.jadetec.co.uk/products/pcs/micropc5000/index.htm) is just 6.2 x 5.7 x 2.2. Its from a UK company but I would imagine you could get something similar over there.

P

[patagoniadave]

[quote:9fef0c99b7="Jeffrey McGrew"]Hey Zoog, check this out:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/handhelds/5fd7/

It's not AMD; which is bad, but it is P4. It's like the shuttle, but with a handle!

Also, do you have cooling problems with that shuttle & AMD? My dual AMD tower at home sounds like a damn airplane because of all it's fans- those AMD's pump a ton of heat!

cool, i love the carbon fiber handle.

About the heat, well i put this thing through the ringer. I also have a prototype hauppauge win-tv PVR 350 card (on board mpeg2 encoder chip) to record and pause live tv, stuffed in the pci slot, and a ATI Radeon 9000 pro 128 mb in the 8x AGP slot!!!! Plus I live in a house with no A/C so it's get put through a torture test, and so far so good :D No prblem with lock ups or anything. The ICE heatpipe technology really works.[/quote:9fef0c99b7]

Toms hardware review kept freaking out about the heat also. You use this machine all day? Or is it just for play?

[patagoniadave]

Send the money to...

The more I look, the more confused I get. :x I just want a fast machine

[christopher.zoog51272]

[quote:49e5e7a197="czoog"][quote:49e5e7a197="Jeffrey McGrew"]Hey Zoog, check this out:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/handhelds/5fd7/

It's not AMD; which is bad, but it is P4. It's like the shuttle, but with a handle!

Also, do you have cooling problems with that shuttle & AMD? My dual AMD tower at home sounds like a damn airplane because of all it's fans- those AMD's pump a ton of heat!

cool, i love the carbon fiber handle.

About the heat, well i put this thing through the ringer. I also have a prototype hauppauge win-tv PVR 350 card (on board mpeg2 encoder chip) to record and pause live tv, stuffed in the pci slot, and a ATI Radeon 9000 pro 128 mb in the 8x AGP slot!!!! Plus I live in a house with no A/C so it's get put through a torture test, and so far so good :D No prblem with lock ups or anything. The ICE heatpipe technology really works.[/quote:49e5e7a197]

Toms hardware review kept freaking out about the heat also. You use this machine all day? Or is it just for play?[/quote:49e5e7a197]

It's my home machine, but i often leave it on for days, and i push it hard when "time shifting" live tv and doing other stuff at the same time. So far no lock ups. I'll see if i can get a temp monitor hooked up to give you an idea of the heat.

Z.

[gregcashen]

[quote:d480d14d2e="Steve_Stafford"]Send the money to...

The more I look, the more confused I get. :x I just want a fast machine[/quote:d480d14d2e]

I am in the same boat as you dave. I have been checking out everything under the sun recently. I am totally confused with all of the options out there.

Here is what I have determined. The laptops that Alienware makes are screaming fast and suck power. Do not expect to be mobile...you will almost certainly have to be plugged in to use it for any useful period of time. That said, they are coming out with a new model next week (unannounced as yet, but you can call 'em and talk to 'em about it.) They are recommending that we wait until that comes out before ordering. They are gonna have P4 3.2Gig 800Mhz FSB, 1 Gig RAM, NVIDIA GO5600 (or something like that) 128MB DDR Video with swappable processor, 60GB 7200 RPM HD w/ 8MB Cache, 15.4" UXGA Screen (higher aspect ration I believe), 3 USB, 1 Firewire, Built-in Soundblaster, DVDRW/CDRW, Infrared wireless remote control...

Anyway, sounds like it is a screamer...Probably around $3000.

I am still confused.

[patagoniadave]

[quote:7a510c6601="patagoniadave"][quote:7a510c6601="Steve_Stafford"]Send the money to...

The more I look, the more confused I get. :x I just want a fast machine[/quote:7a510c6601]

I am in the same boat as you dave. I have been checking out everything under the sun recently. I am totally confused with all of the options out there.

Here is what I have determined. The laptops that Alienware makes are screaming fast and suck power. Do not expect to be mobile...you will almost certainly have to be plugged in to use it for any useful period of time. That said, they are coming out with a new model next week (unannounced as yet, but you can call 'em and talk to 'em about it.) They are recommending that we wait until that comes out before ordering. They are gonna have P4 3.2Gig 800Mhz FSB, 1 Gig RAM, NVIDIA GO5600 (or something like that) 128MB DDR Video with swappable processor, 60GB 7200 RPM HD w/ 8MB Cache, 15.4" UXGA Screen (higher aspect ration I believe), 3 USB, 1 Firewire, Built-in Soundblaster, DVDRW/CDRW, Infrared wireless remote control...

Anyway, sounds like it is a screamer...Probably around $3000.

I am still confused.[/quote:7a510c6601]

You are making it worse, not better :wink: Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out.

[gregcashen]

You are making it worse, not better :wink: Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out.

I think you'll find I usually do :?

[Wes Macaulay]

Wow, Greg - that sounds fast! Esp the fast HD. Laptops have slooow hard drives.

And to anyone who is interested - I am telling people to stay away from AMD chipsets. Here's a repost of my earlier post on the topic:

Got wind of a nasty video that shows what happens when an AMD chipset loses its heat sink and fan, vs. what happens to an Intel chipset... the AMD chipset smokes, and burns (!!) - destroying the motherboard.

Check it out!
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20010917/heatvideo-05

You'll need the DivX codec to see it, if you don't have it already:
http://download.divx.com/divx/DivX505Bundle.exe


...Those of you wanting to make Revit scream: put Intel and RDRAM and the new nVidia Geforce video card in your box!
I normally don't repost messages but AMD's problems with heat really puts me off about using their CPU's.

[christopher.zoog51272]

yes, but how would a heat sink and fan "fall off"? I run my all of my athlons (mp's, xp's, k6's) into the ground and havn't killed one yet. Stability hasn't been an issue for me.

I just can't jusify intel's higher price, looking at the benchmarks, the speed differance just isn't there.

[Steve_Stafford]

I've used AMD stuff for quite awhile and I've not had a problem with them either. Good to know you can't ignore a fan issue though...though why you'd think you could is a whole nuther thing...no chip will be very pleased without a nice fan :D

[PeterJ]

We use mostly AMDs in my office. While I was on holiday my secretary's machine went up in a puff of smoke one night. I am not clear on what component failed initially but she had an Abit motherboard which should not have started up if the fan was not connected. I don't know if that is the same as the fan not working or the fan failing in use, but suffice it to say the processor burnt out as did the heat sensor on the motherboard and during the ensuing crackle of static both her hard drive and CD were inflicted with power spikes or similar which caused them to fail outright. Not good news.

[PeterJ]

I am about to buy a new laptop, probably this week. I have read through this thread and there is little comment on different laptops. Does anyone have an opinion?

I have looked at Alienware, the machine looks good, but to my spec comes in around £2,200 (£2,600 with VAT). That is more than I wish to spend but if I have to I could be persuaded. The big problem is that in this market it only ships in their peculiar green colour and I don't want to spend that kind of money on something I can't bear to look at.

There is a UK company who manufacture a 3.0Ghz P4 machine with a 1600x1200 screen, upped to 1GB of RAM this will sell for a shade under £1,650 (£1,900 with sales tax).

That's a much more attractive price and its from a company who's HQ I can drive to in 10 minutes. Which is a big bonus.

These same people will offer a 3.2Ghz upgrade for a further £175. I have looked at some benchmarks and cannot see that the improvement of the 3.2 over the 3.0 is really worth having but I'll take opinion from anyone that cares to offfer it.

Any thoughts?

[gregcashen]

a 200MHz jump will get you about 16% increase in processor speed...that only matters with things that rely on the processor for speed...math functions, etc. I suspect that with Revit, processor is the primary speed enhancer...right next to RAM.

[rreissig1788]

The best way to get Revit to go any faster on a laptop is to do the following.

Get the laptop booted up and running Revit.

Take laptop to car.

Drive car above the posted speed limit.


There you go.....faster Revit.

Seriously, though, I agree that processor speed has to be the way to go to get Revit running faster. The more discussions that our office has with Autodesk, the more I hear about computations to resolve the database - i.e. number crunching.

Is anyone running a dual processor desktop that could chime in?

[PeterJ]

Really? I can't work that out. 3.0 to 3.2 represents a factor of only 6.6.%,. The benchmarks I looked at showed an in use improvement of around 2.5 - 4.5% in real world terms when using 3D benchmarking tools.

As the machine has an 800 front side bus even with the 3Ghz chip it should race along and the %age increase in cost to 3.2 is far enough beyond the %age performance improvement not to warrant the extra spend.

They are on back order so I have reserved one pending any further developments.

[PeterJ]

Seemingly the way Revit is currenly set up it does not make use of dual processor technology, however accurender as embedded in Revit does....

The notebook I am buying offers hyperthreading so in theory it should show a better speed improvement in accurender than in straightforward Revit operations.

[hand471037]

Just to but in; the thing with AMD's going up in smoke is a non-issue now as far as I know. The thing is that Intel's chips have a system built-in to where they will slow themselves down greatly when hot to keep themselves from frying. AMD chips, which run hotter than Intels (on the adverage), didn't have this feature, and so they were burning themselves. But as far as I know, this feature has been included with the current generation of AMD chips, and now is a non-issue. I think. you might wanna do some research.

My home computer is a dual Athlon MP; I was having a very strange system lock happening. It was due to one of my two processors overheating due to a bad fan. But it didn't instantly fry, it was just flankey, and once I got a better & working fan for it (and vacummed out the case) it was fine.

[gregcashen]

Really? I can't work that out. 3.0 to 3.2 represents a factor of only 6.6.%,. The benchmarks I looked at showed an in use improvement of around 2.5 - 4.5% in real world terms when using 3D benchmarking tools.

As the machine has an 800 front side bus even with the 3Ghz chip it should race along and the %age increase in cost to 3.2 is far enough beyond the %age performance improvement not to warrant the extra spend.

They are on back order so I have reserved one pending any further developments.

Hmm...Let me clarify this a bit...a friend who claims to know about these things (and makes a bit of money at it) claims that 100MHz bump in processor speed corresponds roughly to 8% increase in actual processing power...don't know if this is entirely accurate...guess I should have stated that at the outset. He explained to me why it isn't a linear relationship, but I didn't understand it, so I ignored him. He, and therefore I, could be wrong. :wink:

[PeterJ]

I bought the P4 w.0Ghz machine and it positively jumps along. Very pleased with it so far.

[rakarpassoc]

Sounds like small form factor PC's ("cubes") in a "barebones" condition are becoming popular. There is also a "lunchbox" thing which is a cube with a lcd monitor and a keyboard hinged onto it. Also Pioneer computers has a "dream machine" which is "not much bigger than a external hard drive".
Excuse the inverted comas. They usually mean I am also con-fused.
Many cad people reckon a laptop does not have the bang for buck.
If you drag along one of these things and plug it into someone's LCD projector or 1000 inch LCD television (IMAX maybe?) you could put on a mean presentation or interactive design session.
Also for a little less convenience than a laptop you could take along a 19" or 21" lcd monitor of your own.(or maybe two if you have a twinhead card.)
Any reccos from the gurus? :cry: