New laptop recommendations

[Chad Smith]

I need to upgrade my aging desktop PC at home, and I was thinking about moving over to a laptop. I'm not much of a hardware guy, although in the past I have assembled my own machines, but always after doing extensive research on what the current technologies and terminologies are.

Anyway, I have some specs that I would like to achieve which for the most part I can get, but the video card (as usual) is the hardest part to select. My minimum base specs so far are;
CPU: 2.4GHz
RAM: 3GB (possibly with the option of upgrading to 4)
HDD: Don't care, I wouldn't use it all anyway
Screen: 13-14" (preferably a WXGA+)

Peripherals:
Webcam
eSata
HDMI

Now, if I went to a 15" lappie I get a better selection of video cards which makes life a little easier, but I really want to get a 13-14" if possible. I'm looking for portability, with I can then plug into my 22" monitor in my office.

The choices I can find in my local'ish area in the 13-14" range seem to be;

Nvidia GeForce 9650M GT 1GB
ATI Radeon HD3650 1GB VRAM
ATI Radeon HD3470 256MB VRAM
ATI Radeon HD3470 256MB Dedicated
Nvidia GeForce 9200M GS 256MB Dedicated

Anyone had any experience with any of these with Revit? I've generally been an ATI guy, but that GT is awfully appealing, but might not be as compatible as the ATI. I don't play games anymore, I just need the card to work well with CAD and multimedia (HD video playback, image editing).
I'm looking towards an Asus, HP or Toshiba. Asus seems to have a greater range. I had been watching the Dell XPS for a while now, but their prices have recently gone up. The other brands are currently on sale.

Suggestions?

[Chad Smith]

Since it looks like no-one had any opinions, I went and made a purchase over the weekend. I took a gamble and went Nvidia over ATI for the graphics, and ended up with a HP Pavillion DV5-1010TX. The specs are;

2.53GHz Core 2 Duo
4GB - Upgradable to 8GB (Figured I'd future proof it a bit)
320GB HDD
Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT 512MB Dedicated (Might not be 100% perfect for Revit, but still a great card)
Vista Ultimate 64bit

Some bonus entertainment extras it came with;
Digital TV Tuner
Blu-ray ROM & DVD+/-R/RW

I reluctantly had to go a 15" to get the specs I wanted.
Once I have given it a bit of a run with Revit I will update to add to the hardware compatibility knowledge base.

[Wes Macaulay]

Chad -- sorry I missed your post.

I'm still an ATI fan myself, just because I find the Catalyst drivers to work flawlessly with Revit. We have a couple of Vista based laptops here with GeForce hardware, and they have had to fiddle with drivers -- but what they've done is use the Drivers Heaven driver mod tools to allow them to use nVidia's performance drivers. Otherwise you often can only use the manufacturer's drivers, and those often do not work properly with Revit.

Cheers

[Wes Macaulay]

A bit of an update here. The latest from the owner of the Geforce 9600M is that he HAS had driver problems. But he's found a version of Vista that someone has developed that has drivers built into the install that have solved his problems. Search for "Vista Black by Benjamin".

I wish I had seen your post earlier... I would have recommended against the GeForce card! but my youngest broke his leg on Sunday, the day after we had just moved back into our house after local flooding had inundated our neighbourhood for a week

I've been offline for a few days, you might say