Lightweight laptop for Revit

Hi

You have to excuse my english since I'm Swedish.

I have a friend who has asked for my advice in selecting a new computer. He works a lot with Revit. His knowledge about computers is limited and so is my knowledge about Revit.

Since he often works away from home (apart from working as an engineer, he also works as an airline pilot), he will need a small and lightweight (around 1.5 Kg) laptop. Therefore it has to be a compromise between weight and performance.

I feel that it will have to meet the following requirements:
Laptop with a 13.3 inch screen (or similar size)
Core i7
8 GB of memory
256 GB SSD
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
The best graphics card you can find with the above requirements
A docking station for work at home (with a larger monitor connected)

In my mind I have got stuck with a Sony Vaio S series that meets most of the requirements. The only thing that worries me is the graphics card. It can be switched between an Intel HD Graphics 3000 and AMD Radeon HD 6630M. I assume that the AMD card would be the best choice for Revit work. But the big question is, will this card be OK for Revit?

Or do you have a suggestion for another machine that meets the above requiremennts?

One of our partners has the same machine with the i7 2600 cpu, and uses Revit in viewer mode. The card allows hardware acceleration, ambient shadows, and 3D anti-aliasing. It's slower than the nVidia GTX 460 in my desktop (also i7 2600) but not overly so. Revit uses the cpu much more than the card so as long as you get the eye candy turned on you should be good. Without the eye candy I don't think the graphics card is used at all.

Buy a Macbook Air and run parallels or boot camp on it?

And the 13" is only 1.35kg...lots of presenters at AU and RTC use Mac's....its a little more expensive than a PC...but it seems very worth it....and they are i7's....

Rick Moore:
Thanks for the answer. Nice to know that someone else is using the same type of machine. The one I have been looking at has a 2620M at 2.7 GHz, so I think it will be OK.

cdatechguy:
I looked at the Macbook Air and as far as I can see it only has an i7 at 1.8 GHz and 4 GB of memory. My friends Revit/AutoCad retailer has told him that he needs at least 8 GB of memory. Is there another 13" Mac with a faster i7 and more memory?

Apart from this, my son bought a Mac, and is very satisfied with it. I had Mac as an alternative, but haven't found a alternative that meets the requirements. Another unanswered question is what support the Revit/AutoCad retailer can offer for a Mac installation. I don't know.

Oh good, a retailer that actually says what is needed instead of quoting the lowest system requirements :D

Hmm...Had to look into the memory thing, and yeah, its non-upgradeable :Oops:

Stupid Macs....(hiding under a chair from the mac-fanatics)

Revit on a Macbook air, lololololol. The previous generation Macbook air 11inch could not even run HD videos without sputtering.