Smallest laptop for Revit and 3ds Max

[davepsanders]

Who has the smallest laptop that can successfully run Revit and 3ds Max for smaller projects? M2400? E6400? Studio XPS 13? Something else?

I am a full time student so I want something very mobile with a decent amount of power. I have access at work to a HP 8710w (which I can bring home if I don't mind the hernia) and a BOXX rendering machine so when it is time to do some heavy computing I have options. At first I was trying to compete with these and get a personal laptop that does everything but I really don't want a big laptop (+15"), nor can I afford it and it really doesn't make sense when I can use these other machines.

I would prefer experience over speculation because I have an idea which machines should or should not perform well; but, there are always those issues that come up once you are working on a machine that you didn't plan for. For example, to install CS3 on my wife's netbook I had to force an unreasonable resolution on the poor thing or the installer wouldn't even run. It actually runs ok for what she does, but every once in a while a dialog box comes up with the "cancel/ok" options buried off the screen. Those kind of things...

Thanks in advance, Dave.

[TerribleTim]

Define "smallest". Are you talking smallest screen or smallest processor? There are lots of other things to consider as well, like amount of RAM, vid card capabilities, and so on. Those last two may effect Revit more than the processor, more so if using Vista, the RAM hog!

My recommendation for any Vista system is to forgo the 2gig-RAM machines and get 4gigs minimum. Keep in mind, the OS wants about 2gig-RAM just to run Vista, or so says my techie buddies who work for Microsoft and helped develop the system. Yes, I razz them all the time for the wonderful product they gave us. They don't like it either.

[davepsanders]

Define "smallest". Are you talking smallest screen or smallest processor? There are lots of other things to consider as well, like amount of RAM, vid card capabilities, and so on.

I mean all of the above. I know what the hardware recommendations are for each software package but I am trying to determine what you can "get away with" in reality. I would like to know if someone is using a 14" e6400 with dedicated graphics successfully or maybe even a 9" Aspire One (as if) and if so, what are the specs. It is starting to look like there is a point where the case is too small to house the high performance components and the machines are rumored to be melting down. There are obviously specs that I want on my work machine where we work with large projects all day but for school work I know I can get away with less size and power. There is a stickied thread here that says ~ "avoid the NVS cards... ... although some find them ok..." which is speculation on both fronts. I would like to hear from people who have used different machines with Revit/CS3/3ds Max and whether or not it runs well enough for this purpose.

I do not need it to be the best computer money can buy, I can't afford it and I have options at my work for this type of work. That said, I don't want a machine that chokes when I try working in CS3 or Revit for school projects.

Thanks.

[bjames.164872]

I would recommend as absolute minimum you get a dual core processor of 2GHz or greater, and 3GB of ram. I'm not so sure about screen size, but unless you have good eyes and like to look at tiny things, I would go for 14" or 15".

I bought a Dell E6500- 15" screen, 2.53GHz processor, 4GB ram.

[davepsanders]

I would recommend as absolute minimum you get a dual core processor of 2GHz or greater, and 3GB of ram. I'm not so sure about screen size, but unless you have good eyes and like to look at tiny things, I would go for 14" or 15".

I bought a Dell E6500- 15" screen, 2.53GHz processor, 4GB ram.

With your E6500 did you get the integrated graphics or the NVS 160? What programs do you run and how well do they run?

[cadtag]

I've heard of peopl running Acad 2k10 on Asus netbooks. some dialogs don't work at that resolution, but the app runs fine (windows7 beta OS)