Dell Laptop Advice

I am considering at a Dell laptop Inspiron 8500 for Solidworks,
will the NVIdia GeForce4 Go 4200 give me problems with multiple windows
and should I consider the 1680 x 1050 screen.
TIA

 

I hear the M50 and M60 are good machines and as a perk they use the quadro4
cards that will use the realview stuff that might be in the next release

 

If I had a choice, $$$ not an issue, I REALLY like Alienware. When,
rather than if, they get the 3.06 8000mhz FSB on the mobile
workstations....OMG it is over. Though weight and battery life IMO are
the only drawbacks. And maybe screen size, but hell MAC is the only on
with 17".

 

Hi Andrew...

I have been using Dell laptops for the last 3-4 years for SolidWorks and
they have performed brilliantly..... I first started on an Inspiron 7500
and now running an Inspiron 8200 at 1600x1400 on a UXGA screen. The
machine has 512mb ram and a 40gb hard drive. The image quality is
superb. You would most likely need to run with large fonts, as normal
fonts will most probably be quite a strain on your eyes.

I have 'hacked' the nvidia drivers with either Rivatuner or SoftQuadro
on all the laptops I have used because of the crappy performance with
multiple openGL windows in SolidWorks. I am not sure if it causes
long-term problems with the video card, but it surely removes that
limitation and the performance is very good. Our assemblies run anywhere
between 75-400 parts, so they aren't very large. At any given time, I
may have between 2 and 15 models/drawings open and working quite
productively on them.

Hope this helps....

D. Short

 

If $$$ were not a big issue, the Alienware laptops kick ALOt of butt.
Though a little heavy, and short on battery life, there is quite a bit
of horsepower under that pupppy

 

Matt

Are you able to run Dual-view (on the M50) successfully with SolidWorks
2003?
I find I have to choose between them, hence cannot connect my big monitor
(other than as a mirror), unless I want to crash repeatedly with an nVidia
error, or run software OpenGL

regards

Andrew Troup

 

I can run dual monitors using nView. Sometimes it's a trick to run a
projector as the main display instead of using it as a second monitor.
Mine doesn't crash when doing this. You may want to get with Dell support,
they have come out with new bios, video driver, and video bios to fix some
earlier problems.

 

The newer M50 and M60 have the 700Go that supports the RealView in 2004.

 

Thanks Matt

I had been checking the Dell website for months, the only M50 video drivers
were ANCIENT, and had finally got sick of it and given up, but as you say,
they've recently posted a MUCH newer nVidia driver, together with a video
bios updater to match.
So far it seems to be working well- only one crash in an evening of work.

Kind regards

Andrew Troup

I very much appreciate your response

 

I have used the Dell Inspiron 8000 with 512 megs Ram & Win2000 for
just over 2 years and am now on SWks 2003 with the old original nVidia
GeForce2Go 32 megs, no video hacking.

Never understood much about Wintel optimization and BIOS and hacking
video software so I left it alone. Swks 2003 did slow the Dell down,
though the SP3 release is better. I tend to have major slowdowns with
4 dozen parts in assemblies with lots of curved parts. I do NOT have
a problem with 20+ files open while working on an injection mold.

All in all the Dell has been nearly bulletproof, but I don't abuse it.
I wouldn't count on battery time being good, nor the life of the
battery unless they've made major improvements in the last 2 years
that I haven't heard about.

I'm guessing Swks 2004 is going to mean I have to upgrade to a new
Dell.

 

Jim

Thanks for clarifying that. I knew the drivers wouldn't load on a mobile
installation, but I didn't know exactly who was blocking it.

I'll give 4410 a try

Thanks once more for your help