Laptop recommendation?

[hand471037]

I might be needing a decent laptop soon for moble work. I'm looking more for performace than moblity, for it's going to be more of a mobile workstation. I'll rarely be working off of the battery. It will be used mostly for Revit and Radiance, however I might be using it for some heavy 3D with Blender or MAX.

So I've got a few questions:
Should I advoid the 'moble' P4 processors, and go for a 'real' P4?
Should I try to get something like an Alienware, that has a 'real' and upgradable graphics card?
What brands have people had good luck with?
Should I just get something cheap that's good enough to run Revit on the road, and leave the 'real' 3D work and rendering to my home dual AMD box?

Thanks for the help!

[hand471037]

One other thought:

Should I buy a mini-pc, equipt it with a P4 and plenty of RAM, then get a Wacom 15" Flatscreen instead? Part of me thinks this would work, for you could put together a kickin' mini-pc for under a $1000, the Wacom would cost you $1500, and that would be one great little portable system... Maybe I should do this anyways, for I'm obsessed with the Wacom Flatscreens... :roll:

[JamesVan]

I'm using an IBM ThinkPad T40 with 1.5G Pentium M with 1Gb RAM and a 32Mb RADEON 7500 display card. I can reun Revit quite effectively for most functions, but it is a bit sluggish when rendering or spinning complex 3D views. I don't have much say because the ThinkPad's are standard company issue, but I'd definitely spend extra for better graphics ability.

[GuyR]

Should I advoid the 'moble' P4 processors, and go for a 'real' P4?

There's mobile and mobile. You've got the P4 mobile and the centrino series. A 1.6Ghz centrino is equivalent to 2.4Ghz P4 as I understand it. You can get up to 3.2Ghz P4 HT mobile now. I've also noticed with most of the centrino's laptops I've seen they don't have a great graphics card. So unless you are interested in battery performance I'd probably steer clear of the centrino's.


Should I try to get something like an Alienware, that has a 'real' and upgradable graphics card?

http://catalog.us.dell.com/CS1/cs1page2.aspx?br=7&c=us&cs=19&fm=10485&kc=6V474&l=en&s=dhs

This is what I'm running although not with the HT processors. And my 5150's got an ATI card. It has an upgradable graphics card because I've already got a price for upgrading to the Nvidia card.
Works well and I can get about 3 hours on battery as long as I'm not rendering etc.. I can do about 40 seconds of AVI video overnight so performance doesn't seem to be too bad.

The other thing to watch with laptops is the HD speed . A lot like this Dell use 4200rpm drives. Not sure of the effect this has on Revit.

HTH,

Guy

[hand471037]

Hey Guy, that looks like a good laptop, however 2 gigs of Ram costs $1000 :shock:

How much Ram you've got? I just stepped up at work here from a old P-III 512 Meg machine to a dual-xeon 2 gig machine, and I really don't wanna go back to less memory if I can help it. The 2 gigs rocks and has made a huge difference, esp. in Rendering ability (lots of plants no longer choke Revit). :)

[GuyR]

Hey Guy, that looks like a good laptop, however 2 gigs of Ram costs $1000

Yeah I know, at the time they were doing a double your RAM deal. So I've got 1GB. I'd give them a call if you are interested they might do it cheaper.

Guy

1GB seems to be enough. I've never seem to go beyond 600MB with most of the projects I'm doing.

[lennartik]

I got one of these. Great performance:D short battery life:(


http://www.sagernotebook.com/pages/notebooks/product.cfm?ProductType=5680

[PeterJ]

I have a Taiwanese baby locally badged but made by a company named Clevo Co. It has the P4 3.2 Ghz, a gig of RAM and the ATi mobility radeon 9600. Nice fast machine. Very stable. 15.1" screen capable of 1600 x 1200 native but will output up to around 2400 x whatever if connected to an external monitor.

Nice bit of kit.

Built in wireless and a DVD writer too.

The 80311b is a little slow if you use the briefcase functionality of Windows as, unless you are careful, you can find yourself shunting ten or firteen 10MB files across the network unnecessarily. Possibly better to consider CDRW

[BomberAIA]

I'm looking into upgrading my laptop. What processor is best for Revit? 3.0 ghz P-4 w/ HT Tech or a P-M 1.7 ghz? P-M is the latest processor, but does Revit takes advantage of HT? Both processors have 128 mb graphic cards.

[lennartik]

I found this laptop with the new 64-processor. Here's a review of it:
Seems like the fastest thing out there + decent battery life for this perfomance:

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=1916

Manufacturer

http://www.voodoopc.com/systems/m855.aspx

[hand471037]

Just bought the Sager, and it rocks. Very happy with it so far. Only downside is the hour-long battery life (!). Price you pay for the full P4 I guess. Seeing that it's more moble-workstation than moble computer, I'm willing to trade that off.

The 64 bit thing looks way cool, just keep in mind that Windows doesn't make any use of it, and probably won't be able to for at least a year or more, and even when it does it might only support Intel's 64 proc and not AMD's (The two are rather different). So it's just going to run as 32 bit. Only Linux fully supports this processor at this time, and from what I've heard, that support is good but not great right now. So if you really want/need a 64 bit sytem, just buy a Apple G5 or an old Sun/Alpha. ;)

[BomberAIA]

Revit or Acad doesn't run on a G5.

[hand471037]

Bomber, man, that was a joke, for Acad/Revit aren't 64-bit aware anyways, and won't be any time soon. So it's kinda pointless to run them on a 64 bit system anyhow, for they wouldn't be running at full speed, and if you really had to have a 64 bit system you'd want to buy a G5, for they are cheaper, faster, and work right now- and also wouldn't run your AutoCAD/Revit at full speed. :)

Just making the point that using 64 bit Operon systems for Windows is kinda pointless, for Windows can't make use of that processor fully, even if it's a little faster than a normal Intel/AMD. and the fact that when they finally get around to making Windows 64 native that MS might go with Intel's spec, rather than AMD's, thus making your AMD 64-bit system pointless for other than 32-bit Windows applications... you'd be 'Stuck in the middle'. I'd wait this out, and see what MS does this year in regards to the AMD 64 bit chips, and wait until there is at least some kind of annoucement that they will support this with Windows XP in the future.

While that laptop is super-cool, and I would love to have one, unless you're running Linux applications on it too you're never gonna really see it's full potential anytime soon, and possibly never.

[BomberAIA]

No one has really answered my question. I want to know which processor is better for Revit. The Pentium M 1.7 ghz Centrino or a Pentium 4 3.0 ghz w/ Hyper Threading? I am using a Pentium 4 1.4 ghz w/ 1 gig of ram on XP Pro. Should I up grade or wait?

[hand471037]

From what I've read, and the research that I did prior to buying the Sager, the 1.7 Centrino roughly equals a 2.4 Ghz P4 Desktop in speed, and can be a little faster in certain cases. They score nice and high on the AutoCAD AUGI benchmark, whatever that is. I don't know anyone who's running Revit on one, but I just found out from someone here (I'm now working for a reseller doing Revit training and support for folks) who's an Inventor guru that many people are having great results running Inventor with Centrinos. Seeing that Revit is closer to Inventor than AutoCAD, I'd imagine that it would run Revit very well.

So, what I decided, is that it seems to be a balance of cost & power; the Centrinos cost more, are a little slower than the full P4 3.0 HT, but last a long time battery-wise (most hit four hours or more), and the Sager I bought was cheaper, overall faster than the Centrino (which, since I do a lot of rendering stuff, is important to me), but only has a battery life of an hour and a half... :(

Another issue is that the only laptop I could find with a 128 meg video card and a Centrino was the new Dell M60, which clocks in at 3 grand. :shock:
I wanted the better 3D card, and didn't have that kind of money, so I went with the cheaper Sager.

[BomberAIA]

Thanks. The Dell Inspiron has 128 meg of RAM also. To get the price down, I looked into buying my own RAM. Dell's RAM is too exspensive. I have a Latitude which cost more than the Inspiron. I bought it so I could upgrade w/out buying new docking stations, etc. I now find out the new D series is not compatible w/ my C840. Now I am thinking of buying the cheapest system. Have you seen the new Emachines? They just got a pretty good review in PC World.

[Scott D Davis]

If you are looking to get a Dell, watch www.slickdeals.net or www.gotapex.com Both of these websites always have the deals/coupon codes/etc. for Dell computers. Their RAM is expensive, definately buy it somewhere else.

[Steven Campbell]

I use http://www.techbargains.com/

:D :D :D

[BomberAIA]

I meant Video Ram...128 megs.

[BomberAIA]

Gateway bought Emachines.

[BomberAIA]

Dell just came out w/ a laptop w/ a P4 3.4 GHZ w/ Extreme HT. It has 2 gigs on its cache and a 800 mhz bus, 128 megs video ram and up to 2gigs of ram. This machine should rock, but is the price worth it? I can get it for $4,200 after a 15% discount. Pretty expensive. This chip is $800 more than a P4 3.4. Does anyone think this machine is worth it? Thanks in advance.

[Scott D Davis]

Problem is, it'll be obsolete by the time it hits your doorstep! Not really, but I find buying the absolute "best" most up-to-date computer not really worth it. If you can wait a couple of months, you wont pay 'premium' any more because something slightly better will be available.

I look at what I really need as far as power to get the job done, and buy that. Right now, Revit rocks on almost any P4, with a Gig of RAM.

[GuyR]

Does anyone think this machine is worth it?

If you can justify it go for it. As with most technology it's out of date as soon as you buy it. I've got a 3.02 GHz Dell 5150. It's a good machine I can see it lasting me another year at least, I'd get the nvidia card though as I don't think the ATI 9000 is as good as my old Geforce2 desktop machine. Only thing is the P3.04 pumps out LOTS of heat when it's working hard. I quite often leave it rendering overnight and we've just discovered our wooden dining table has split along one of the joins. The other half is NOT impressed... So go for it just be careful where you use it :-)

Guy

[gregcashen]

New computers are like new cars, they depreciate by about 20% the day you drive them off the lot. I prefer to go refurbished because you can get the reliability and service of a name brand for much less money. And most of them are not even used...they are mostly overstock, shipments that were misdirected or otherwise messed up and could not be sold as new, etc.

[hand471037]

One thing to also keep in mind when it comes to laptops is that most of them are made by only six or seven corpirations, and then rebranded. I wanted a laptop that had a desktop processor & video card in it so that I could use it for serous 3D & rendering work- so I was orginally thinking of getting an Alienware, or something like it, but all the name brand ones were like this Dell- way too pricy. After doing some research, I found out that most of Alienware/Voodoo's are actually re-branded Sager laptops, and that you can buy direct from them for way less. So I don't have a fancy case like the Alienware, and it's not custom overclocked and such, but man; it was damn near $1000 cheaper for the same laptop! So keep in mind that Dell's stuff isn't made by them, and you might be able to find the same thing from somewhere else cheaper!

BTW my Sager is almost the same as that Dell, other than the plain P4 3Ghz Hyper-threaded vs. the 'P4 Extreme' (which is simply an overclocked P4 w/ a bigger cache, if what I've read about it is true). And my Sager was $2400 out the door... so you're gonna pay $1600 or more for something that could possibly only be 10% (if that) faster in your day-to-day business?

[BomberAIA]

Just bought a new laptop from Dell: Inspiron XPS Extreme Edition 3.4 GHz, 15.4 Wuxga, 128 mb ATI Mobility Radeon 9700, 1GB DDR 400 MHz. I'll let you know how Revit runs on it. Everthing I read about this machine, it screams. This chip is Intel's newest techonlogy.

[mlgatzke]

I've been looking for a new notebook too. I've been trying to concentrate on the WideScreen 17" machines, preferably with a P4 3G processor (at least), 2GB of RAM, and at least a 128MB Video card. I like Dell, but the biggest screen they've got is a 15.4 (which is what I have now). I even checked their Precision notebook, but it only comes with a 1.7GB processor. HP has a 17" that fits the bill, but I've never bought HP and I don't know how reliable their notebooks are. Gateway's got one, but . . . it's Gateway . . . never mind. Too bad they're not making dual-processor notebooks. . .

[BomberAIA]

I just read a review of the new HP 3.2 GHz Exreme Edition 17" laptop. Cons: Heavy and noisy. The Dell is as heavy as well, but it has only a 15.4" screen. Dell has done a better job in cooling the computer. Dell cost about $600.00 more after I got a 15% discount. I will let you know about the Dell when I get it next week.

[BomberAIA]

I cancelled my Dell laptop due to the sales person jerking me around. I never got a firm price. He told me one price e-mailed me another. What has happened to Dell?

[mlgatzke]

I still like Dell. I think it's the salesperson's approach, not the corporation's policy.

[BomberAIA]

I'm thinking about getting a HP zd7000 3.2 GHz Extreme Endition w/ a 17" screen. It's $600.00 less than Dell and there's no tax. Has anyone experienced HP?

[BomberAIA]

Sorry, it's Extreme Edition, not endtion.